I gotta be honest, when doing a list no one cares about or reads about my personal favorite songs, almost all of which by bands that rarely, if ever, get played on the radio and therefore aren’t super popular, there’s a lot of inherent pressure on every single song’s placement, but deciding what song to put at number four might have been the hardest decision of the list. For one the top three is important, because they’re a lot of top three lists, so number four doesn’t get to make it. There’s also a lot of top five lists, but number four is the least important spot because even though it’s higher on the list than five, five gets to start out the list, which places a certain amount of importance on it, and then you go to four and then once you get to three you get back to the top three importance, and then two is special because it was so close to being the best and one is special for obvious reasons, so any kids out there reading this you should just make sure not to be fourth, that being said this song should be very proud of being this high on the list and it’s a very amazing song that was very close to making the top three.

It’s the very last song from Say Anything on my list that included 18 songs from my favorite band – the next highest was Brand New with 10, nine of which have been counted down so far. Does it seem weird that my favorite band, kind of by far, doesn’t have a song in my top three favorite songs? I don’t really know. But almost one out of every five songs on the list was by Say Anything and one out of every four songs in the top 20 was by Say Anything, so even though they aren’t at the very tip top of the list they were very well represented.

“The path into this heart is littered with corpses, and strewn with body parts of stronger souls than you. So child, don’t go getting your hopes up.”

            I wouldn’t necessarily say the path to my heart is littered with corpses. For one that would imply a lot of people have been after my heart, which isn’t true. Not to sell myself short, there have been a few, but I’m much more apt for the corpse in this metaphor. I’ve been chasing down hearts, but not ones unwilling or unable to love, just ones that weren’t looking for me (in that moment). That’s part of the problem, and why I can relate to “So child, don’t go getting your hopes up.” I’m so stuck on my past experiences with those I once loved and those I still love but can’t be with that I’m unable, but not necessarily unwilling, – or so I try to convince myself – to open my heart up to anyone who would be willing to love a fool like me. It’s a horrible feeling when I know someone wants to be with me but I’m not able to open my heart to them, I’d say it breaks my heart but the whole reason the problem arises is because I don’t let my heart get in the matter, not that I really have a choice.

I guess that’s not entirely true. My does heart gets involved because I don’t have a choice. It does whatever the fuck it wants, and apparently it gets some pleasure out of being hurt. I’ve been known to fall for girls. I believe falling fast and hard is what the kids say, and that holds true for me, sometimes not always that hard, usually harder than faster. But after I fall I always, always, always think of the past, and I compare and contrast with the present, and this is a very unhealthy way to try and find happiness. The past almost always wins, because what’s better than regret? On the rare occasions that the present has won is only in my preparation to play the corpse.

One more thing about Madonna (isn’t this supposed to be about football) I’ll get to football in a moment…probably. No one finds her attractive, right? I don’t mean to be mean, and I don’t literally mean nobody, but the whole super skinny and slightly muscular look isn’t appealing on women, right? And this isn’t me trying to sound sexist. This is my eyeballs telling me a fact. I’m convinced that eighty to ninety percent of the people perpetuating the “girls look better skinny” thing are women, not men. Almost every one of the men I know prefers curves and is actually a little turned off by a skinny woman. I get that super models are known as the most beautiful women on the planet, to which I vehemently disagree with, but the thing about super models is they’re skinny because the clothing designers – hate to stereotype, actually I don’t that much, but most clothing designers fall into one of three categories, woman, gay, or trying to have sex with models – want their clothes to appear slimming, so they hire skinny women, but generally the skinny women that get hired will also have pretty faces, so I argue that super models are not beautiful because they’re tall and skinny, but rather because they have beautiful faces, therefore skinny is not attractive, don’t get me wrong, neither is being overweight, and aside form just the aesthetic being too skinny and too fat are both unhealthy so from an evolutionary standpoint it makes sense that they would be unattractive because people would want to breed with the best of the best of the opposite sex, or in today’s era adopt with the best of the best of the same sex, which is cool with me, lots of kids need parents and I haven’t seen any evidence to convince me two moms or two dads would do a worse job than two people of the opposite sex, not to mention usually the kid ends up being “raised” by only one parent (so will football be talked about at all?) I might make a prediction at the end.

For some reason I kind of like both the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. I didn’t like the Ravens for an unexplainable reason, possibly because a lot of people have been liking them lately so I jumped the other way, and I hate the San Francisco 49ers because I’m a big Seahawks fan – although I would like the 49ers if I wasn’t a Seahawks fan and Alex Smith wasn’t on the team, I grew up loving black athletes so white quarterbacks really annoy me for some reason. I’m happy both teams made it to the super bowl, but I really shouldn’t be.

The Patriots have had enough success for awhile, so I don’t really think they need to win, but I just love watching Tom Brady so much, which is weird because I usually root for the underdog. But it’s hard to root for the underdog when watching one of the greatest athletes to ever play the sport, which Brady might be. Even watching Tiger Woods after he had sex with all those women and became my hero…I mean a horrible and despicable man – as a person who still hasn’t had sex finding out he cheated on his wife made me hate him because the idea of sex and who people have it with has now become way too important and meaningful to me and also I’m extremely jealous of his penis – but when watching Woods it’s hard not to want him to return back to glory, just so I can watch one of the best players of all time. There’s just something great about watching someone who could be the best ever, and that’s the feeling I get when I watch Tom Brady or when I would watch Payton Manning and probably that I’ll get in a few years when watching Aaron Rogers (all white by the way) damn, where are all the good black quarterbacks hiding. Could Cam Newton be my great black hope? No, because he beat Oregon in the BCS game so now I hate him forever.

With New York I kind of like them because they’re such a high profile team that everyone overreacts when they lose, and that excites me because I know just how good their defense can be and that they can easily be an elite team in the league, which they proved. But I still hate Eli Manning (another white quarterback) but surprisingly not because he’s white, but rather because on draft day he didn’t want to play for San Diego and bitched and whined about it until he went to New York and San Diego got Philip Rivers, who I also don’t like (white quarterback) but I think the Giants would have been more successful with Rivers, possibly two super bowls before playing for this possible third, but who knows how anything would have ended up, I just think Rivers is a better quarterback but to be fairer to Eli Rivers has played on his share of extremely talented teams and has yet to end up even in a super bowl, but to be somewhat fair to Rivers he’s had to go up against Baltimore’s defense, Pittsburgh’s defense and the power house offense’s of the Colts and Patriots.

Let’s see, what else…oh yeah! For some inexplicable reason I really like the song Like A Prayer by Madonna (what else about football?) how the hell would I know?

I feel like this will be an exciting game played down to the wire with both teams giving it their all, but a couple players aren’t really that into it, they were just incredibly gifted athletically and the sport pays well, but others leave their blood, sweat and tears on the field, and other lesser known players who don’t see much action run out to the field and collect those blood, sweat and tears of the famous players in baggies and sell them on Ebay.

My prediction: Madonna rocks our socks off.

My other prediction: Godaddy continually tricks me into checking out there website where no females are found nude.

My other other prediction: Twitter goes over capacity while everyone simultaneously tweets “Gronk!” and/or searches “Bibi Jones”/“Britney Beth”

My other other other prediction: Brady leads the Patriots down the field where a next to last second field goal wins the game over the Giants, 27 to 24.

The prediction everyone’s been waiting for: All my predictions are wrong, obviously excluding this almost paradoxical one.

I don’t know how I feel about Russell Brand. Well I guess I kind of do. I don’t like him as an actor, or at least as a leading actor, but to be fair I don’t think I’ve sat through any of his movies to completion. When I first saw him as a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno a few years ago I really enjoyed him, but as I saw more and more of him I liked him less and less, but I always remained interested in him as a person. The fact that he married Katy Perry, who I’m bizarrely very attracted to – I mean she is attractive but I don’t think she’s as hot as she seems to be in my head – only makes me dislike him more, but that’s just a jealousy thing, but not because I want to marry her. I don’t want to marry her, I’d just like to have a go at her. Well not really. Well kind of really. But if I were to hypothetically have sex with her I’d like to hypothetically do it with her not being married, and lucky for my hypothetical her and Russell Brand are getting a divorce, although I’d rather they have a successful and happy marriage together than allow my hypothetical to become a possibility – Here’s how attracted to her I am, there’s only one super model that I’m more attracted to than I am to her, albeit I’m not very attracted to super models, but a lot of people seem to be (the chick is Marisa Miller by the way).

The podcast got into his upbringing and dealing with drugs and sex and food and other of his demons. Listening to this reminded me of why I liked Russell Brand when I first heard him. He sounded very smart and articulate and was kooky and funny and fast paced and it felt like he was putting on a performance, but it didn’t seem like he was (does that make sense?) Like while listening to it I had the enjoyment of watching a crafted performance, but it didn’t feel like he was intending it that way and went into it thinking, “I need to come off witty and smart so people will like it.” It really did feel like he was being himself, and it was very entertaining, so if you like interesting podcasts, or hearing about people’s problems with drugs, or comedians or like Russell Brand or hate Russell Brand I think this would be a nice podcast to listen to.

Link to What The Fuck With Marc Maron – Russell Brand Interview

The perfect picture to encapsulate her total sexiness...and perfectly segues into the next podcast episode

Another more recent very entertaining episode of the Marc Maron podcast was this past weeks episode where, spoiler alert, the host of possibly the funniest podcast there is and very funny stand up comedian Todd Glass came out of the closet (can someone announcing their gay be spoiled?).

He talked about how he felt guilty holding this secret in for so long. He had told some of his really close friends but it wasn’t known in the comedy community. It’s gotta be extremely hard for anyone to tell people their gay, but I imagine it’s gotta be some extra kind of at least weirdness to do it in the comedy community where faggot and gay are often used pejoratively and being gay could possibly hurt a career where it seems the majority of gay comics go the stereotypical route. And this isn’t a Lance Bass or Clay Aiken situation where America collectively lets out a gasp followed by a sarcastic, “Well there weren’t a million signs that would ever have given that away.” And in Lance Bass’s case his career was pretty much done and being gay I’m betting helped him get on Dancing With The Stars – not because of the stereotypical gay themes the show has going for it, but because coming out on the cover of a magazine put in back in the publics eye – and in the case of Clay Aiken the type of music he was making wasn’t necessarily appealing to die-hard sports fans and frat boys, so I’m assuming most of his crowd, minus a select few really old ladies, didn’t mind that he was gay. That’s not to take away from how hard of a thing it was for them to do, just comparing, not that it needs to be compared, that in Todd Glass’s case I’m assuming no one who wasn’t close with him would really see it coming, except for his now stereotypical love of setting the right room décor, but this wasn’t Larry The Cable Guy or Dane Cook coming out, so I’m betting almost all of Todd Glass’s audience doesn’t mind at all that he’s gay, so this is all moot.

Todd Glass

Anyway, it’s nice that he finally felt comfortable enough to at least not feel too overwhelmed to admit he’s gay, and I say comfortable enough because I imagine it’s near impossible to ever feel completely comfortable in that kind of situation. I’m not a person who says every gay person should come out of the closet as soon as possible, I think it depends on each individuals situation, but I can’t wait until we live in a world where every person grows up with the comfort of knowing they can tell their love ones they’re gay whenever they want.

 Link to What The Fuck with Marc Maron – Todd Glass interview

Other noteworthy podcasts of the past week or two were The Adam Carolla Show with Donald Faison from Scrubs where they talked about Star Wars vs. Star Trek, strip clubs, clueless, Donald’s kids, much more, and Donald wasn’t afraid to laugh, which is actually really nice in a podcast guest. Also Jim Norton was on The Adam Carolla Show this past Friday where Adam ranted about Opie from Opie and Anthony ranting about Adam Carolla being a dick when Adam Carolla claims he’s not seeing things the way they really were, and also they get into Jim’s perverted sexual ways, and this wouldn’t be a good episode to listen to if you don’t like hearing a guy talk about how he likes women to pee on him and to masturbate to married couples he found on craigslist having sex in front of him.

Donal Faison link —- Jim Norton link

Also The Todd Glass Show had Anthony Jeselnik and Jonah Ray where they did very funny bits, none of which I can really remember off the top of my head except the one about food, but Jeselnik and Ray were their usual funny selves and so was Todd. And the episode before that had Chelsea Peretti who is very pretty and even funnier and did a spot on home shopping network bit.

Link to Jeselnik and Ray episode —– Link to Peretti episode

And if you’re interested in hearing me and my friend Christopher on our podcast we talked about Lana Del Rey not sucking on SNL, although with those nice big lips I’ve got something for her to suck on and by that I mean a bunch of lollipops – I went on The Price Is Right two years ago and won a lifetime supply of lollipops and when they say lifetime supply they don’t mean call up the lollipop company and they’ll send you lollipops whenever you want, they mean they dump 4 tons of lollipops on your front lawn and now I gotta get rid of these things and I’m assuming with her big lips she can help speed the process up (none of that is true) although if that hypothetical situation were true I bet her lips would speed up the process – and also we talk about a cussing child on Modern Family, some football, and we have a somewhat serious discussion about Christopher starting to have doubts in his comic abilities.

Closer To Clarity link

]]> http://closertoclarity.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/podcasts-to-listen-to-part-2-not-really-part-2/feed/ 0 closer to clarity Marisa miller todd_glass3_20090716 http://closertoclarity.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/teletubbies-i-mean-vision-not-tubbies/ http://closertoclarity.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/teletubbies-i-mean-vision-not-tubbies/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:48:28 +0000 Danniel http://closertoclarity.wordpress.com/?p=995 ]]> Napoleon Dynamite (animated series Sundays on Fox)

Granted – yes, I’m starting off with the word granted – I haven’t seen Napoleon Dynamite in very many years, and even when I did see it I wasn’t one of the many people who fell in love with the quirky comedy, so before I even say anything about this show you should know that it probably isn’t aimed towards me, although I get the impression that it isn’t aimed towards the die hard fans of the indie classic either, I think it’s some kind of weird mixer of Napoleon Dynamite meets the new era of The Simpsons meets King of the Hill meets numerous failed animated shows.

This seems like it’s just going to be a quirky show, like most animated comedies, especially on Fox. It’s not going to push the boundaries like Family Guy did, and it’s never going to be as funny as The Simpsons once was, but to be fair most comedies will never reach that level of The Simpsons seasons 4 through 8 for even an episode, and it probably won’t be able to stay as fresh as King of the Hill was able to, although many people of my generation did not seem to like that show, so I’m thinking Napoleon Dynamite will probably not last long. My prediction is just one season and then it’s canceled because I don’t think the Napoleon Dynamite fans will like it, and I don’t think people who didn’t like Napoleon Dynamite will even want to give it a chance.

It had some giggle parts, nothing I can particularly remember, but it wasn’t a show I’d call funny and I wouldn’t tell you to even give it a chance. Bob’s Burger’s was a lot funnier.

Modern Family

I haven’t been keeping up with this show terribly well since Survivor is on break so I haven’t been watching Survivor at 8 and then flipping to ABC at nine to watch a funny show in Modern Family and then an even funnier show in Happy Endings, which when it first premiered last year I tweeted that it would become the new bad show that I would watch every week, that didn’t hold true because it ended up being a genuinely good show, even though it’s a straight comedy and I have no emotional holds to any character, which I’m about to cite as one of the reasons I don’t love Modern Family as much as I used to, but unlike Community Happy Endings never really posed as a show that was trying to invest you emotionally in the characters, well maybe a little bit but it abandoned that quickly and is now a quirky comedy, much like Community which I think took a lot longer to just accept itself as a straight comedy – by the way, with In The Middle at 8, a show I don’t much care about but is very watchable and many people seem to enjoy, and Suburgatory at 8:30, which I’ll talk about in a moment, followed by the aforementioned Modern Family and Happy Endings, I think Wednesday night on ABC is the new number 1 comedy night, I mean in terms of good shows, it used to be NBC on Thursdays with Community, Parks and Recreations, The Office and sometimes 30 Rock and sometimes something much crappier, but only Parks and Recreations is great in that lineup, considering 30 Rock shifts times and usually doesn’t come on til January, so I dub ABC Wendesdays the best comedy night, but of course CBS Monday is the highest rated with shows like Two and a Half Men, Two Broke Girls, How I Met Your Mother and Mike and Molly, none of which I care for, granted I’ve seen very little of Mike and Molly and How I Met Your Mother is a very well written show but it rarely strikes my comedy bone.

About me not being emotionally invested in the Modern Family characters, I just don’t give a fuck for any of them. They have arguments and don’t get along and struggle to be a loving family every week, and every week at the end of the episode they learn to love each other despite their faults, which is completely fine, it’s just there’s no bigger picture I care for. None of the couples are going to break up and there’s really no real reason to care about any of the kids lives, it’s just a show about a family being funny, which is fine, except the show hasn’t been as funny and unique as it was in the first season – I’m not saying I don’t like the characters, I’m just don’t really feel for them.

They’re doing some things. The Mitchell and the other gay dad whose name I forget’s adopted baby Lily is growing up, so that presents more unique storylines for them to deal with, like the most recent episode which got a lot of controversy because the kid says fuck. Well the kid allegedly says fudge on set and then it’s bleeped and blurred out so the audience thinks the kid says fuck bringing up the story line of what to do when your kid says a curse word. It seemed pretty accurate. One parent was surprised and upset and the other was laughing about it. Oh, Cam is the other gay dad’s name, but you knew that.

Some group that hates free speech was upset about having this kid pretend to say a curse word on television. I complain about this all too much, but it’s all about the context. Faggot is obviously a bad word, while words like fuck, shit, cock are not bad unless used in a horrible context. In this situation the kid didn’t really say fuck, and while I hate that fuck has to be bleeped out because when we hear the f and the rest is bleeped out we of course know it’s fuck so bleeping it out is pointless if we know what’s being said, in the context of the story the two dads have to figure out how to deal with their kid cussing, and I think it was pretty realistic, so instead of pretending like everything is perfect and clean on TV like these assumedly religious assholes want – no offense open mined religious people – why don’t we portray how life really is and the creative part can be in the two dads seeing the situation different until they both ultimately realize it’s all a part of life and laugh over it, instead of doing what probably happens most in real life which is chastising the kid for cursing and scaring it with the threat of hell and then when it repeats the word because kids aren’t perfect the parents starts beating the kid. I think educating people through a comedy television show that laughing at situations like this is a lot better than acting like cursing is a huge deal and that people should be shamed for it.

Suburgatory

Last time I talked about the show I talked about not minding that George and Dallas kissed because it was under mistletoe and Dallas just played it off as nothing, well apparently George isn’t as dumb as I thought he was because on the very next episode George confronted Dallas about it and accused her of only offering him a job so she could spend more time with him and by the end of the episode George realized – I believe wrongly – that she was just wanting him to build a space for her shop and not just be closer to him.

I do enjoy that the kiss was addressed, but not immediately and instead they waited an episode. Now we’re back to George kind of thinking Dallas likes him and Dallas liking him a lot but still having a husband so who knows what might happen, although on this last episode Jay Mohr, who plays Dallas’s husband, was seen by George in Atlantic City with a very pretty lady, we are to assume he’s having a fling with her, and probably many other lady’s, and also might accept a job offer that will keep him far away from Dallas and his daughter Dalia for quite some time, which of course will only make Dallas more lonely and sooner force her into the arms of George, although I don’t know how willing he’ll be, which is where I think the writers can really go crazy with this storyline. My prediction is that by the end of the season Dallas and Jay Mohr will break up but George will be with some other chick thus prolonging the will they won’t they.

As for Tessa, well I think she’s kind of a slut. She may not come off that way because she’s very intelligent and witty and not obsessed with her looks like almost every other person in Chatsworth, but let’s look at the evidence. George moved Tessa to the Suburb because he found condoms in her drawer. However she could have been in somewhat of a serious relationship with someone. Very early in the season she started making out a lot with the very muscular brother of her newest friend in the town. And now most recently she invited over Africa boy who she hasn’t known that long for what could very easily be implied as sex. I’m not saying she’s going to be doing porn anytime soon, although I wouldn’t be against that nor would it necessarily be a degrading thing for certain women – which reminds me that one of my bigger laughs from the recent episode was when Jay Mohr gave a pep talk to Chris Parnell’s character and then the two strippers decided to do personal growth things and one subtly said, “I’m going to confront my step-dad,” which I found very funny, mostly because it didn’t seem overplayed – but Tessa doesn’t seem like she’s making it very hard for attractive males to get close to her.

I actually don’t mind this character trait in Tessa. I’m not entirely sure why. Even though there’s nothing wrong with it, in most situations, sexually provocative women make me uncomfortable, while sex driven men just make me roll my eyes. No doubt this is due to my virginity and still having no idea how two people go about figuring out they both want to have sex with each other. But also I’m extremely jealous, a horrible trait, and the idea of a girl wanting to be with other guys than me, which won’t necessarily happen with whatever girl I’m with, and also being very sexually attracted to other guys, which will definitely happen and that’s just a part of life, just makes me feel bad, which I’ll have to get over if I’m going to live a healthy life. Obviously Tessa hooking up with these hot guys is going to make me a bit insecure when I finally hook up with her, but I think I don’t mind this character trait of hers because I finally realize these girls on TV are just characters and don’t really exist in the real world, especially the Kardashians.

By the way, I’m writing all this as an excuse to post the video and possibly get more people to see it because I do want people to see it, no matter how bad it may be I do feel like there’s some good in it, and hopefully if I keep doing it I can get better, especially with my acting. I notice a lot that I get so bored with acting and when I watch  it back I have no energy and it looks like I don’t give a shit, which I kind of don’t about acting. It’s fun, but not so much when it’s by myself. Also the repetition gets to me. Sometimes I’m saying the same thing over and over and over again so much that it just becomes me saying the words totally forgetting that I need to be aware of my facial expressions. Anyway,

I decided to bring this topic back again when a little over a week ago I finally summoned up the courage to call her – a different girl then the one who didn’t call me back previously – and I got through to her but we didn’t talk and she said she’d call me back but she didn’t call me back and she didn’t apologize or acknowledge it so it annoyed me, so I had to make a video about people not calling me back, since like as I mentioned in the video it date backs to high school with me where my friend would say he’d call me when he’s leaving for a party and then he wouldn’t call me and just go to the party by himself and never acknowledge that he didn’t call me.

Anyway any thoughts on the video or the subject, even negative, will at first make me hate you and want to rip your heart out, then make me want to drown myself in a bathtub full of Mike’s Hard Lemonade – I’m an alcohol pussy – and then make me realize you’re right and I should use the criticism to work harder on what I need to do better…but then I’ll still want you dead for being right…smiley face.

I was a little nervous, mostly because it’s college radio and even though I thought college was supposed to be about expanding your mind you still can’t cuss on college radio, which is fucking ridiculous because by now we should know that words aren’t fucking bad, but rather the context of the words make them bad, but I’ve railed about that enough. It wasn’t hard not to cuss. Despite my penchant for obscene language I don’t feel the need to use it. They’re just like any other words to me. I can find other ways to say things, maybe it won’t convey my point as well as I liked, or sound as good, but it will do. Plus because it’s my friend’s show and not mine I don’t feel the need to try and strongly convey my point on things. I think that makes it more fun and easy going for me, rather than doing the podcast where I often struggle to find the right words to allow the listener to know what’s going on inside my head.

I don’t even remember what we talked about. Something about a woman rubbing her butt on a 30 to 40 million dollar painting, which I thoroughly enjoyed because I’d like to see butt rubbing become the world’s biggest insult. The painting is one of those artsy fartsy paintings that I’m either too smart or too fucking stupid to understand why people think it’s so fantastic. I’m more impressed when people paint like a super realistic mountain or lake with a reflection in it or whatever. I don’t mind really far out weird stuff, particularly surrealism, but the stuff in the vein of Jackson Pollack is just beyond me. Again, I may just be too dumb to understand it.

At some point we talked about rape, I can’t even remember why. Oh, because there was a story about this guy breaking into his ex’s house and cuddling with her and then Chris made a joke about him being in prison and the inmates cuddling with him, only he said it in a way that was funny, not like the way I just wrote it, so listen to the episode to hear that joke – I’ll post a link where you can listen to the show if you’d like, and also see the painting I was just talking about. I’m not sure if we were allowed to talk about rape on college radio, but we did, and it was nice. We didn’t go into brutal detail like we probably would have on the podcast, but we made some cliché dropping the soap in the shower jokes and things of that nature and I found it at least somewhat humorous. Definitely better than when we talked about the zombie fly taking over Bees bodies.

I got to play a song, so that was cool. Yes, much like everybody in the entire world I love forcing people to listen to my shitty music, only unlike most people I don’t assume everyone will love it and then am really surprised and disappointed/offended when they don’t – although on occasion I am, because I am just like everyone else in fact. I wasn’t really prepared for it, so I just picked the song I had listened to the most the previous day, You Know Who You Are by E For Explosion.

            I like the band mostly for the lyrics, but overall the songs are enjoyable. The lyrics that struck me most from this song were, “If I could make a promise to give you your last first kiss, would you swear to keep my smile hanging from your lips?” Also in the song he sings, “I’m standing here before you and I know I’m such a wreck. I should be somebody’s mess. I could be your mess.” Which I of course identify with because I’m a wreck, although I don’t necessarily want to be somebody’s mess, I’d like to clean up my miserable act before I allow myself to give my all to someone, otherwise I fear I’ll just keep screwing things up, which I’d like not to do.

   Anyway if you like listening to people talk about generally nothing you should give the college radio show a listen by clicking on the link I provide.

Suburgatory

George and Dallas...well Dallas and George's side face.

After a big episode of Suburgatory in which George and Dallas finally kissed – I say finally for some reason even though it’s only been nine episodes – I had to wait almost a month for the next new episode. I said “finally” but it felt too soon for me because once they do finally hook up, which I hope they do eventually but not too soon because once they do my emotional hook for the show might be no more. I like a little will they won’t they in a show. I think The Office did it well where Jim and Pam had Essentially two seasons (three seasons, but only 50 episodes) of will they won’t they tension and then got together and never looked back. They didn’t try to milk it like in Frasier where Niles didn’t get with Daphne until season 7 – a story I liked hearing on one of the Newsradio commentaries is when the writing team of Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil went to work for Frasier and in their first writers meeting the subject of finally getting Niles and Daphne together was brought up and the question of was it too soon to end the goose that lays the golden egg, meaning if they got them together they wouldn’t be able to go for the awkwardness of those two characters together in scenes, and Johnson and Marcil’s thoughts were that they might as well get them together because they’ve milked it enough and getting them together would bring up new situations with the two they could get comedy from. I also hate when the characters get together early and then break up and then are forced together when the show comes to an end, kind of like in Scrubs and even Friends where on the last episode Ross stopped Rachel from going to Paris, or went to Paris with her or whatever, and by then I had no longer cared at all about Ross and Rachel getting together, not that I ever really did because I was like seven when that show started.

This recent episode of Suburgatory, titled Driving Miss Dalia, is what I fear Suburgatory might be once Dallas and George get together. Oh, and this is where editing would come in handy but I hate doing that, I forgot to mention that I didn’t mind the kiss on the previous episode too much because it was under Mistletoe so Dallas played it off as if it was just because of the Mistletoe and not because she had feelings for George, so his dumb ass is still blind to it. This episode wasn’t that funny and wasn’t that interesting. For some reason I’m not interested in any of Tessa’s relationships with boys, except for maybe that black nerd whose name I can’t recall, but that’s only because I’ve always liked black people since I was young, so I want more of him in the show, not necessarily in a romantic way with her, but I do enjoy the comedy of him and Tessa’s other friend, Lisa, when they’re together, like in the episode where they thought Tessa’s body was being taken over by the spirit of the girl who lived in the house before she moved in.

I guess I enjoyed the nude fight seen in the sauna a little bit. It was funny to see Chris Parnel’s nude penis blurred out in the background while the fight was going on. Probably not as great as Viggo Mortensen’s nude fight seen in Eastern Promises, but I’m too scared to try and find that clip online and watch it.

It’s only been ten episodes and I’m already tired of the “look how rich and out of touch these tan white people are,” jokes. I’m hoping the writers will be able to get pass that and find other ways to create comedy in the show, which they have done, but it’s still centered around how weird the rich people are, which makes sense because that’s the comedy premise of the show, but shows should evolve, and I should cut this show some slack since it’s only been ten episodes. If they’re making jokes about how white everyone’s teeth are in season four I’ll stop cutting them slack though.

Work It

I know you're going to judge it harsly based on this picture, but if you watch the show you'll be surprised to find that it's actually a lot worse than it looks.

Unfortunately I’m not going to bash this show as much as everyone else appears to – after having written this and this now being the editing it turns out I may have bashed it just as much as everyone else. Don’t get me wrong, it truly is a horrible show, but lots of shows are made that are horrible every year, most of them don’t get picked up and put on TV, sometimes some do, this happens to be one of those cases. I like to imagine Ted Cohen and Andrew Reich (creators of Work It) – who by the way  worked on such failed shows you’ve probably never heard of as Three, interestingly starring James Van Der Beek and Chuck’s Zachary Levi, Romantically Challenged which starred Alyssa Milano and Kyle Bornheimer, who is one of those guys you know when you see because he’s starred in a few failed sitcoms most recently Perfect Couples and before that Worst Week, and speaking of Worst Week, that was also done by Ted Cohen and Andrew Reich and they also did, and this is amazingly interesting to me because when I was trying to think of the worst sitcoms I’ve seen I thought of this but couldn’t remember the name, Welcome to the Captain, which I wanted to watch because Jeffrey Tambor was in it and I loved him from Arrested Development, but this show was horrible so it’s very interesting to see that it was created by these two, but the only reason I bring any of this up is not to try and shit on Ted and Andrew’s careers, because honestly with only everything I just named they’d be more successful writers than most aspiring writers will ever be half as successful as, so congratulations to them, but I bring it up because they wrote on and produced on some seasons of Friends, and not like the last two seasons, but they wrote on the show from 1997 to 2004, and are credited with more written episodes of Friends than anyone but David Crane and Marta Kauffman, the creators of the show, so perhaps the Friends credentials are why they keep being allowed to create shows that are, I don’t want to say horrible but, that are absolutely horrible.

I imagine these two walking into the head of ABCs studio being like, “Alright, we don’t have any good ideas, we haven’t had a successful show since Friends, and that wasn’t even our idea, we were just there to make sure Joey said, “How you doin’” every couple of episodes” – again, not shitting on them, more successful than I’ll ever be – “but we’ll just go into this meeting, pitch this crappy show about how men need to cross dress because women are stealing all the jobs, and we’ll make a horrible pilot that won’t get picked up and no one will ever see and we’ll each make six figures and be on to our next shitty idea.” Three months later, “Holy shit, I can’t believe they’re going to air this show for all of America to see. People will finally realize we’re hacks. Oh well, at least we’ll make more money.”

In all honesty that’s just what I hope. I’d be way more in favor of them just trying to make a shitty product to make money than if they thought this show was really funny or saying something truthful about society and would have a positive impact on people.

I don’t know if the writers are intending to be sexist. I get the feeling they think they’re just being funny and not really trying to shit on women and think the show will have redeemable qualities because by pretending to be women and being around women they’ll learn more about how to treat a women, like when at the end of the episode he makes things better with his daughter by turning her cell phone back on so she can talk to boys again – I’d argue that’s not really sexist because girls, and boys, that age really want to talk to people of the opposite sex – and to make it up to his wife for not fulfilling her needs more he gets her a really nice purse and she’s all better – Okay, that’s a little, maybe a lot, more sexist, I know a lot of women do really like getting nice things and some women enjoy nice things more than a real connection with the man, or possibly rich lesbian, but in my experience most women, even very good looking women, want men to understand the problem and what they’re doing wrong, not just make it up to them with gifts.

Obviously just because they’re trying to be funny about it doesn’t mean it’s okay to make sexists jokes. I’m more offended that the jokes aren’t funny than that they’re sexist (and that says a lot, and not in a good way) probably, but when jokes can be what some find offensive but done in a funny way people don’t seem to mind as much. Modern Family is a smash hit, and for some reason no one seems to care that the two gay guys on the show – one of them gay in real life, the red head I believe – are the typical flamboyant gay, and much of the jokes being made with them are about how they aren’t manly, but it’s done in a funny and apparently not offensive way. This show would probably be less hated for its offensiveness if the women were the winner in the end, but they weren’t.

Early in the show one of the side characters who is clearly meant to just be a character for jokes talked about how women were going to take over society and make men sex slaves, but not the good kind of sex but instead sex slaves with “kissing and cuddly and” wait for it…wait for it…wait for the totally unique punch line…“listening.” Again, I’m more offended with the horrible and trite joke more than the sexist nature of it. That’s not to say that I wasn’t also offended by its sexism, I just get more easily offended by bad comedy, which is why I’m so offended of myself (well the sexism doesn’t help) well some believe porn is sexist and that actually distracts me pretty well – not really, I’m probably most sympathetic to the feminist cause when watching porn.

Oops, wrote about the wrong joke in relation to what I was talking of in the previous paragraph. After hours and hours of laughing followed by an applause break by the studio audience from the “listening” punch line he goes on to say that the women will make pride illegal. Jesus Fucking Christ, I don’t get offended by much (except apparently bad jokes, real civil rights activist this guy) I do my part, I watch lesbian and black pornography, but insinuating that women don’t have pride, or at least that men have an overwhelming amount of more pride than women, is pretty fucking offensive. But I have no problem with that being said in the show, but at no point do they try and disprove that by having one of the many women characters showcase a tremendous amount of pride. Wait, that one girl did say they couldn’t leave the club until she got laid, is that pride? (Not even close).

My biggest problem with this show is that I have no idea where it can go. Are these guys going to cross dress forever and really never be recognized? It is pretty bad that none of them can recognize them, but for all the people saying they’re calling women dumb because the women don’t realize they’re really men, in fairness to the creators in an earlier scene the main guy was dress in drag right in front of his friend who didn’t even recognize him, so I think it’s less about people being too dumb and more about them saying this guy is an amazing cross dresser. The show isn’t funny, they did barely anything to make the jokes and characters redeemable – and saying the purse thing was barely anything is far more generous than they deserve – and just avoid this show at all costs. It’s not even worth a “look at how horrible this show is,” laugh. It’s just sad, and pretty pathetic, and again, I hope they did it for the money and not because they thought they were creating something of actual worth.

Also I was encouraged to make this its own thing because it felt considerably different. Unless you assume I change my voice whenever I have phone sex, which happened too few of times and too long ago for me to remember if I did, then I’m playing a character. On the show I’m not exactly playing myself, but I’m playing a very close version of myself, where this guy is very different from me, yet still has some parts that are very close to how I think, like when he talks about her talking about the big dicks too much.

I haven’t had any sexual experiences in person, assuming masturbation isn’t sexual, and the way I do it it’s definitely not, but I have had some sexual conversations both on the phone and on the internet and it’s very common for the girl to say, “I want your big hard dick inside me.” There’s one problem with that, I don’t have a big penis. Now in most, if not all (not all), situations the girl hasn’t seen my penis, so shouldn’t I be happy that she’s trying to make me feel good by calling it big? No, not at all.

For starters I don’t think she’s doing it for me. I’m almost convinced she’s doing it for herself, to paint the sexiest picture she can in her head while she pleases herself. This also makes me feel that girls really do like big penises. Not giant penises, but bigger than average penises. And even if she was doing it to make me feel better how is giving me a compliment about something that’s not true going to make me feel better? It’s like me saying I love her long blonde hair, big boobs and tight pussy but really she’s a small cross dressing Filipino boy – I once talked to a girl online, not sexually, who later informed me that she was really a gay Asian man, we still continued to talk after that, because that’s just the kind of person I am. Do compliments that aren’t true make people feel better? In my case they make me feel worse. If a girl tells me she wants my large penis then I start to feel self conscious and like my penis wouldn’t be good enough for her.

Can’t girls just say, “Your short limp dick turns me on so much,”? That way if the guy has a small penis he can be like, “Great, I finally found a girl who likes small penises.” And if the guy has a large penis he can say, “Actually I have a huge hard cock, babe,” and she’ll be like, “oh thank God, I hate small dicks, all women like big dicks and no woman could ever love a man with a small penis, big nose, small chin, and who is only 5’6”.” Okay, maybe all women don’t think that, and maybe I could use some therapy.

My mother, yes the same mother who always forgets, or just straight up neglects, to flush the toilet, I’m glad you remembered her, but hey I’m 24 and should be moved out by now so I shouldn’t complain, yet I still do, she gave me half a tuna sub sandwich from Subway, and it was absolutely disgusting, but her heart was in the right place so I shouldn’t complain, yet I am complaining. It’s not her fault and I’m not mad at her at all and had it not been hours and hours old it would have been halfway decent, except I’m getting sick of tuna subs, I’d much prefer the Italian sub, even though everything Italian makes me thing of hot Italian guys and how women like them so much and then I get jealous, but God damn is that Italian sub good, so it’s kind of worth it. The bread of the sub was kind of soggy from the tuna. The bread is usually the best part. Can I go to Subway and just order the bread?

I struggled with eating the soggy tuna sub while I listened to an episode of the podcast How Did This Get Made where they shit on bad movies most of the time, even though they claim to be celebrating bad movies. Sometimes, like in the case of Crank 2 or Fast Five, they really do celebrate how entertainingly bad the movie is, but most of the time they just talk about how irredeemably horrible the movie is. In the case of this episode with Doug Benson they talked about how horrible and slow the movie Twilight Breaking Dawn part 1 was. They made it sound so bad, which is probably very accurate. I don’t generally like that podcast but I still listen to it sometimes if it’s a movie I’ve seen or a guest I like, in this case Doug Benson. Although I’m not a huge fan of the podcast I do enjoy Paul Scheer’s work a lot, and Jason Mantzoukas is by far the second best thing about the show The League, only behind Taco. I don’t know why I’m mentioning any of this, as if anyone who stumbles upon this cares. But I’m telling you about my day and that was part of my day, but mostly I’m just letting the words flow and every once in awhile commenting on how they’re flowing.

Later I made breakfast and texted with Robin and texted with Victoria and wished I was talking to Annie and hated myself for wishing I was talking with Annie and tried to work out while listening to the Adam Carolla podcast and took a shower and ate Oreos and liked the Oreos and was glad I tried to work out so that it could offset the Oreos and then I recorded a podcast and I don’t think it went that well since I had to do it by myself because Christopher was busy today, which I didn’t mind because sometimes I like doing the podcast by myself, but I felt out of sync with myself today and don’t think I found much clarity within myself, not that that’s necessarily what the podcast is about, except it kind of is. I like it to be funny, which it usually is when it’s with Christopher, but I also like to talk about the things going on inside me, which I do more when I do it alone and I think I analyze in a slightly different way when I’m doing the podcast because I know other people will listen…well not many other people, and I really only assume they will, but either way it gives me a slightly different perspective of myself, which is nice.

After that I did exactly nothing until I started writing this mostly out of boredom and feeling depressed. I don’t know how much of this I’ll continue to write, or what I’ll do with the rest of my day to try and keep me up. I’m feeling so lazy today and I don’t like it at all. Writing this feels nice though. I mean I don’t think it’s very good, it’s just a typical blog, and I say that not knowing what a typical blog is. It’s just my thoughts at this moment. It feels good to have my fingers moving. I wish they never stopped moving.

Hearing this song performed live in an old basement tavern in downtown Portland with only about 25 other people while only ten feet away from Kevin Devine strumming his guitar and singing his soul out was one of the greatest moments of my life (says the man who has never had sex therefore can’t say he’s ever really experienced true greatness) I can’t necessarily argue with that, but seeing this song live was amazing, and I’m lucky to have discovered my love for this song before I heard it live, unlike when I saw Say Anything perform back in 2006 when they were just a band I had heard a few songs from when I would listen to Christopher’s MP3 player, so I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the experience of hearing Admit It, Alive With The Glory Of Love and Belt, all of which were in the top 30 of this countdown (27, 16 and 10, respectively).

“I realize that my shit’s about as small as it could be, but that makes me feel worse for even feeling this bad in the first place.”

That line speaks to me about as much as any line in any creative endeavor ever has, and that includes my own work. Not only because my ass droppings are generally little, but mostly because in terms of quality of life I have things so fucking good, yet I feel so God damn depressed, and I know I should be happier, but being so sad over such small shit makes me feel even worse, quite pathetic.

It is worrying, but I’m young enough to have some hope that it’s not an official pattern, and I don’t yet have to fear of the songs warning being true to me, “And when you realize it’s a pattern and not a phase, it’s what you’ve become and it’s what you will stay, that’s ballgame.” Ballgame meaning the game is over (“And that’s the ballgame, folks”) because once it becomes a pattern what more is there to look forward to? I mean sure I can find more creative ways to keep myself from ever being happy or succeeding, but is that really a life worth looking forward to? No, not for me, and arguably less so for the people in my life. So for me and more importantly the people I care about I hope my previous way of living and even some times current way of thinking was and is just a phase, and not a pattern.

I say way of thinking because it’s not just about where I am in life. Where I am in life is 24, still living at home, no car or license or job or girlfriend and never having had sex (which for some reason is considered a bad thing?) for certain reasons it is, but also I have a supportive family, and friends, and way more people in my life that care about me than I deserve, and food to eat, and a cellular phone I pay for with the little money I make that if I were an adolescent teen I could use to send pictures of my naked penis – or perhaps it in a tuxedo – to women, but I don’t, not because I have class, but because I’m deathly afraid I’ll accidently send it to my mother, but the point is that I’m at a good place in life, well not good in terms of who I am and what I’ve done as a person, but good in what I’m surrounded by, yet I can’t be happy. Part of it is healthy. I hold myself to high standards and unfortunately I’ll probably always think I should be doing better in life even if I’m doing greater things than I could have ever imagined. That isn’t necessarily the healthy part, but it’s nice not to be content with just being good. Although it would be nice if rather than dying to be great and being shit I could not care and just be okay. Or is that better? I guess that’d be better. I guess that’s not who I am because I don’t wanna be just okay, I want to be great, and I believe one day I will be. Although maybe I just wanna set myself up for failure because I like being sad? I don’t think I like being sad. I don’t think I really have a choice. I still like being hopeful though.

I’m writing this at the library. (Why is that relevant?) Well aside from it being way too crowded, much like the bus, with people that I feel sorry for/scare me, much like the bus, I’m also writing a lot. I wrote what you’re reading of this so far, plus a short skit, another longer skit thingy, and transcribed/edited another short skit all in just over two hours – had I been at home in that time span I would have listened to two podcasts and masturbated one and a half times. I wanted to try this out because while helping my mother with work over in Canby a couple weekends ago I had a lot of spare time in between show times for Sherlock Holmes and there weren’t any movies I really wanted to watch in the 8 auditorium theater so instead I went over to a coffee shop 33 feet away from the theater and sat with coffee and wrote and I seemed to get some stuff done, so I decided to leave my house and write somewhere else, although not coffee shops because it seems cliché, I don’t have anything near me but seven Starbucks, and I don’t really have money to buy coffee everyday, plus I didn’t want people to see me writing, especially in a coffee shop, so I decided on the Library since I live a 104 seconds walk away. Unfortunately because a large portion of the world still doesn’t have a computer/internet access the library is crowded with people, 20% of which are using the computer, 65% of which are waiting to use the computer, 10% of which are reading the newspaper, 4% of which look lost, 1% of which are looking for books, 100% of which I feel are staring at me casting judgment when I’m not looking, and 0% of which are hot girls looking to hook up with a 24 year old virgin who has zero sexual experience and is writing at the library but not on a novel or screenplay.

I kind of love the library though. I really love this song.