on the genius of Chuck Klosterman
Because I think everyone in the world needs to read Chuck Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs," and because I don't have the money to buy it for everyone I know, I am spending my afternoon typing up several of my favorite passages. This is because a) I have certain obsessive-compulsive tendancies, and like typind, and b) I have an exam tomorrow in my poetry class which I'd rather not study for.
So, if you like what you read I may let you borrow the book, but only for a week or so, because I have a tendancy to reference it interminably and need it to find page numbers.
On love, John Cusack, and Coldplay:
Fake love is a very powerful thing. That girl who adored John Cusack once had the opportunity to spend a weekend with me in New york at the Waldorf-Astoria, but she elected to fly to Portland instead to see the first U.S. appearance by Coldplay, a British pop group whose success derives from their ability to write melodramatic alt-rock songs about fake love. It does not matter that Coldplay is absolutely the shittiest fucking band I've ever heard in my entire fucking life, or that they sound like a mediocre photocopy of Travis (who sound like a mediocre photocopy of Radiohead), or that their greatest fucking artistic achievement is a video where their blandly attractive frontman walks on a beach on a cloudy fucking afternoon. None of that matters. What matters is that Coldplay manufactures fake love as frenetically as the Ford fucking Motor Company manufactures Mustangs, and that's all this woman heard. "For you I bleed myself dry," sang their blockhead vocalist, brilliantly informing us that the stars in the sky are, in fact, yellow. How am I going to compete with that shit? That sleepy-eyed bozo isn't even making sense. He's just pouring fabricated emotions over four gloomy guitar chords, and it ends up sounding like love. And what does that mean? It means she flies to fucking Portland to hear two hours of amateurish U.K. hyperslop, and I sleep alone in a $270 hotel in Manhattan, and I hope Coldplay gets fucking dropped by fucking EMI and ends up like the Stone fucking Roses, who were actually a better fucking band, all things considered.
Not that I'm bitter about this.
On breakfast, silence, and Extreme:
There's not a lot to say during breakfast. I mean, you just woke up, you know? Nothing has happened. If neither person had an especially weird dream and nobody burned the toast, breakfast is just the time for chewing Cocoa Puffs and/or wishing you were still asleep. But we've been convinced not to think like that. Silence is only supposed to happen as a manifestation of supreme actualization, where both parties are so at peace with their emotional connection that it cannot be expressed through the rudimentary tools of the lexicon; otherwise, silence is proof that the magic is gone and the relationship is over (hence the phrase "We just don't talk anymore"). For those of us who grew up in the media age, the only good silence is the kind described by the hair metal band Extreme. "More than words is all I ever needed you to show," explained Gary Cherone on the Pornograffiti album. "Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me, cause I'd already know." This is the difference between art and life: In art, not talking is never an extension of having nothing to say; not talking always means something. And now that art and life have become completely interchangeable, we're forced to live inside the acoustic power chords of Nuno Bettencourt, even if most of us don't necessarily know who the fuck Nuno Bettencourt is."
On SimChuck:
After seventy-two hours of Simming I had grown so despondent over the sexless, consumer-obsessed state of my fake life that I called directory assistance and got the number of Electronic Arts in Redwood, California, demanding to speak to Sims creator Will Wright. They directed me to their satellite deivision Maxis, and I used the Maxis company directory to leave a message with Mr. Wright, assuming he was working on the prototype for SimSoul and would most likely never call me back. However, I was wrong: He returned my call in just a few hours and tried to help me understand how I've managed to destroy my life twice.
On the Real World, Big Brother, and soundtracks:
When I initially heard CBS was creating the quasi-Orwellian reality program Big Brother, I was wildly enthusiastic. It sounded like a better version of The Real World, because the premise seemed to guarantee emotional confliction: Not only were they going to force total strangers to live together, but these poor chumps wouldn't even be allowed to leave the room. I imagined it would be like jamming Puck and Pedro and Amaya and that drunk Hawaiian girl into anne Frank's annex and forcing them to emote at gunpoint. This would be perfect television.
However, Big Brother was a failed experiment, and I know why: They don't use music. I never knew what was going on. During key moments on The Real World, we are always instructed how to feel; if two people are playing chess to Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," I know their relationship is doomed; if they're playing along with Sheryl Crow's "Everyday is a Winding Road." I know they are mending fences and exploring a new level of companionship. But on Big Brother, there is never a musical subtext; in this particular instance, we'd merely see two hollow stoics moving rooks and knights, wholly devoid of sentiment. Without a soundtrack, human interaction is meaningless.
On Billy Joel and love:
When I hear "Just the Way You Are," it never makes me think about Joel's broken marriage. It makes me think about all the perfectly scribed love letters and drunken e-mails I have written over the past twelve years, and about all the various women who received them. I think about how I told them they changed the way I thought about the universe, and that they made every other woman on earth unattractive, and that I would love them unconditionally even if we were never together. I hate that those letters still exist. But I don't hate them because what I said was false; I hate them because what I said was completely true. My convictions could not have been stronger when I wrote those words, and - for whatever reason - they still faded into nothingness. Three times I have been certain that I could never love anyone else, and I was wrong every time. Those old live letters remind me of my emotional failure and my accidental lies, just as "Just the Way You Are" undoubtedly reminds Joel of his.
On television, rock & roll, and marijuana:
Last year I had to go to one of those "adult" parties. I think you know the kind of party I mean: People brought their screaming children and someone inexplicably served fresh cornbread, and half the house stood around and watched the local news affiliate when it came on at 11:00 P.M. I spent the whole evening in the kitchen with the two guys I came with; we tried to have an xclusionary conversationdespite the fact that we consciously drove to this party in order to be social. Most of the guests began to exit at around midnight, which is the same time some odd fellow I'd never seen before suddenly appeared next to the refrigerator and pulled out a Zippo lighter and a little wooden box.
The gathering took a decidedly different turn.
Ten minutes later, I found it necessary to mention that Journey was rock's version of the TV show Dynasty. This prompted a spirited debate we dubbed "Monkees = Monkees." The goal is to figure out which television show is the closest philosophical analogy to a specific rock 'n' roll band, and the criteria is mind-blowingly complex: It's a combination of longevity, era, critical acclaim, commercial success, and - most important - the aestheic soul of each artistic entity. For example, the Rolling Stones are Gunsmoke. The Strokes are Kiefer Sutherland's 24. Jimi Hendrix was The Twilight Zone. Devo was Fernwood 2-Night. Lynyrd Skynyrd was The Beverly Hillbillies, which makes Molly Hatchet Petticoat Junction. The Black Crowes are That '70s Show. Hall and Oates were Bosom Buddis. U2 is M*A*S*H (both got preachy at the end). Dokken was Jason Bateman's short-lived It's Your Move. Eurythmics were Mork & Mindy. We even deduced comparisons for solo projects, which can only be made to series that were spawned as spin-offs. The four Beatles are as follows: John = Maude, Paul = Fraiser, George = The Jeffersons, and Ringo = Flo. David Lee Roth's solo period was Knots Landing.
So there's proof: Marijuana makes you smarter.
On Porn and idiocy:
Of course, it should go without saying that our reality is profoundly fucked-up. Twenty minutes on the Internet cum trade is all it takes to realize that the sexual peccadilloes of modern people are cliched, sad, incomprehensible, and/or a combination of all three. If you are to take "real" porn at face value, you would be forced to conclude that women rarely have pubic hair, except for those who are advertising as having mre pubic hair than normal. There seems to be an unabated demand for naked teenage girls, although there also seems to be a tacit understanding that any moderately small-breasted thirty-one-year-old woman can pass for a teenager if she has pigtails and a lollipop. There is an inordinate amount of bandwidth focused on girls urinating on themselves and/or licking their own nipples (is this fun?), and there's a big demand for interracial sex, first-time anal sex, public flashing, and the ham-fisted implication of incest. What's most disturbing is the amoun of internet porn that has absolutely nothing to do with sexual desire and everything to do with cartoonish misogyny, most notably the endless sites showing men ejaculation on women's faces while the recipients pretend to enjoy it; this has about as much to do with sex as hitting someone in the face with a frying pan.
And - of course - there is also a pocket of men who masturbate to images of women getting hit in the face with frying pans. I guess there's no accounting for taste. But there's really no puropse in complaining about pornography, either. Yes, it's socially negative; no, it's not nearly as negative as Ted Bundy claimed before his execution. The tangible effect of pornography is roughly the same as the tangible effect of Ozzy Osbourne's music on stoned Midwestern teenagers: It prompts a small faction of idiots to consider idiotic impulses, which is why we have the word idiocy.
On porn and women:
The issue is that something that's probably bad (i.e., pron) is helping us achieve something that's probably good (i.e.., delivering a technological notion to the comman man).
Yet one question remains:
Why don't women need this?
If this theory is all true, why are 99 percent of porn sites directed toward heterosexual men? Wouldn't this imply that females can't fathom the difference between the real and the virtual, even though they all obviously do? Why can women comprehend the power of the internet without masturbating to JPEG images of dehumanizing sex acts? And why would no inteligent woman ever feel the need to rationalize her own weakness by arguing that her perversion actually expands her mind?
I can only assume it has something to do with licking your own nipples.
So, if you like what you read I may let you borrow the book, but only for a week or so, because I have a tendancy to reference it interminably and need it to find page numbers.
On love, John Cusack, and Coldplay:
Fake love is a very powerful thing. That girl who adored John Cusack once had the opportunity to spend a weekend with me in New york at the Waldorf-Astoria, but she elected to fly to Portland instead to see the first U.S. appearance by Coldplay, a British pop group whose success derives from their ability to write melodramatic alt-rock songs about fake love. It does not matter that Coldplay is absolutely the shittiest fucking band I've ever heard in my entire fucking life, or that they sound like a mediocre photocopy of Travis (who sound like a mediocre photocopy of Radiohead), or that their greatest fucking artistic achievement is a video where their blandly attractive frontman walks on a beach on a cloudy fucking afternoon. None of that matters. What matters is that Coldplay manufactures fake love as frenetically as the Ford fucking Motor Company manufactures Mustangs, and that's all this woman heard. "For you I bleed myself dry," sang their blockhead vocalist, brilliantly informing us that the stars in the sky are, in fact, yellow. How am I going to compete with that shit? That sleepy-eyed bozo isn't even making sense. He's just pouring fabricated emotions over four gloomy guitar chords, and it ends up sounding like love. And what does that mean? It means she flies to fucking Portland to hear two hours of amateurish U.K. hyperslop, and I sleep alone in a $270 hotel in Manhattan, and I hope Coldplay gets fucking dropped by fucking EMI and ends up like the Stone fucking Roses, who were actually a better fucking band, all things considered.
Not that I'm bitter about this.
On breakfast, silence, and Extreme:
There's not a lot to say during breakfast. I mean, you just woke up, you know? Nothing has happened. If neither person had an especially weird dream and nobody burned the toast, breakfast is just the time for chewing Cocoa Puffs and/or wishing you were still asleep. But we've been convinced not to think like that. Silence is only supposed to happen as a manifestation of supreme actualization, where both parties are so at peace with their emotional connection that it cannot be expressed through the rudimentary tools of the lexicon; otherwise, silence is proof that the magic is gone and the relationship is over (hence the phrase "We just don't talk anymore"). For those of us who grew up in the media age, the only good silence is the kind described by the hair metal band Extreme. "More than words is all I ever needed you to show," explained Gary Cherone on the Pornograffiti album. "Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me, cause I'd already know." This is the difference between art and life: In art, not talking is never an extension of having nothing to say; not talking always means something. And now that art and life have become completely interchangeable, we're forced to live inside the acoustic power chords of Nuno Bettencourt, even if most of us don't necessarily know who the fuck Nuno Bettencourt is."
On SimChuck:
After seventy-two hours of Simming I had grown so despondent over the sexless, consumer-obsessed state of my fake life that I called directory assistance and got the number of Electronic Arts in Redwood, California, demanding to speak to Sims creator Will Wright. They directed me to their satellite deivision Maxis, and I used the Maxis company directory to leave a message with Mr. Wright, assuming he was working on the prototype for SimSoul and would most likely never call me back. However, I was wrong: He returned my call in just a few hours and tried to help me understand how I've managed to destroy my life twice.
On the Real World, Big Brother, and soundtracks:
When I initially heard CBS was creating the quasi-Orwellian reality program Big Brother, I was wildly enthusiastic. It sounded like a better version of The Real World, because the premise seemed to guarantee emotional confliction: Not only were they going to force total strangers to live together, but these poor chumps wouldn't even be allowed to leave the room. I imagined it would be like jamming Puck and Pedro and Amaya and that drunk Hawaiian girl into anne Frank's annex and forcing them to emote at gunpoint. This would be perfect television.
However, Big Brother was a failed experiment, and I know why: They don't use music. I never knew what was going on. During key moments on The Real World, we are always instructed how to feel; if two people are playing chess to Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," I know their relationship is doomed; if they're playing along with Sheryl Crow's "Everyday is a Winding Road." I know they are mending fences and exploring a new level of companionship. But on Big Brother, there is never a musical subtext; in this particular instance, we'd merely see two hollow stoics moving rooks and knights, wholly devoid of sentiment. Without a soundtrack, human interaction is meaningless.
On Billy Joel and love:
When I hear "Just the Way You Are," it never makes me think about Joel's broken marriage. It makes me think about all the perfectly scribed love letters and drunken e-mails I have written over the past twelve years, and about all the various women who received them. I think about how I told them they changed the way I thought about the universe, and that they made every other woman on earth unattractive, and that I would love them unconditionally even if we were never together. I hate that those letters still exist. But I don't hate them because what I said was false; I hate them because what I said was completely true. My convictions could not have been stronger when I wrote those words, and - for whatever reason - they still faded into nothingness. Three times I have been certain that I could never love anyone else, and I was wrong every time. Those old live letters remind me of my emotional failure and my accidental lies, just as "Just the Way You Are" undoubtedly reminds Joel of his.
On television, rock & roll, and marijuana:
Last year I had to go to one of those "adult" parties. I think you know the kind of party I mean: People brought their screaming children and someone inexplicably served fresh cornbread, and half the house stood around and watched the local news affiliate when it came on at 11:00 P.M. I spent the whole evening in the kitchen with the two guys I came with; we tried to have an xclusionary conversationdespite the fact that we consciously drove to this party in order to be social. Most of the guests began to exit at around midnight, which is the same time some odd fellow I'd never seen before suddenly appeared next to the refrigerator and pulled out a Zippo lighter and a little wooden box.
The gathering took a decidedly different turn.
Ten minutes later, I found it necessary to mention that Journey was rock's version of the TV show Dynasty. This prompted a spirited debate we dubbed "Monkees = Monkees." The goal is to figure out which television show is the closest philosophical analogy to a specific rock 'n' roll band, and the criteria is mind-blowingly complex: It's a combination of longevity, era, critical acclaim, commercial success, and - most important - the aestheic soul of each artistic entity. For example, the Rolling Stones are Gunsmoke. The Strokes are Kiefer Sutherland's 24. Jimi Hendrix was The Twilight Zone. Devo was Fernwood 2-Night. Lynyrd Skynyrd was The Beverly Hillbillies, which makes Molly Hatchet Petticoat Junction. The Black Crowes are That '70s Show. Hall and Oates were Bosom Buddis. U2 is M*A*S*H (both got preachy at the end). Dokken was Jason Bateman's short-lived It's Your Move. Eurythmics were Mork & Mindy. We even deduced comparisons for solo projects, which can only be made to series that were spawned as spin-offs. The four Beatles are as follows: John = Maude, Paul = Fraiser, George = The Jeffersons, and Ringo = Flo. David Lee Roth's solo period was Knots Landing.
So there's proof: Marijuana makes you smarter.
On Porn and idiocy:
Of course, it should go without saying that our reality is profoundly fucked-up. Twenty minutes on the Internet cum trade is all it takes to realize that the sexual peccadilloes of modern people are cliched, sad, incomprehensible, and/or a combination of all three. If you are to take "real" porn at face value, you would be forced to conclude that women rarely have pubic hair, except for those who are advertising as having mre pubic hair than normal. There seems to be an unabated demand for naked teenage girls, although there also seems to be a tacit understanding that any moderately small-breasted thirty-one-year-old woman can pass for a teenager if she has pigtails and a lollipop. There is an inordinate amount of bandwidth focused on girls urinating on themselves and/or licking their own nipples (is this fun?), and there's a big demand for interracial sex, first-time anal sex, public flashing, and the ham-fisted implication of incest. What's most disturbing is the amoun of internet porn that has absolutely nothing to do with sexual desire and everything to do with cartoonish misogyny, most notably the endless sites showing men ejaculation on women's faces while the recipients pretend to enjoy it; this has about as much to do with sex as hitting someone in the face with a frying pan.
And - of course - there is also a pocket of men who masturbate to images of women getting hit in the face with frying pans. I guess there's no accounting for taste. But there's really no puropse in complaining about pornography, either. Yes, it's socially negative; no, it's not nearly as negative as Ted Bundy claimed before his execution. The tangible effect of pornography is roughly the same as the tangible effect of Ozzy Osbourne's music on stoned Midwestern teenagers: It prompts a small faction of idiots to consider idiotic impulses, which is why we have the word idiocy.
On porn and women:
The issue is that something that's probably bad (i.e., pron) is helping us achieve something that's probably good (i.e.., delivering a technological notion to the comman man).
Yet one question remains:
Why don't women need this?
If this theory is all true, why are 99 percent of porn sites directed toward heterosexual men? Wouldn't this imply that females can't fathom the difference between the real and the virtual, even though they all obviously do? Why can women comprehend the power of the internet without masturbating to JPEG images of dehumanizing sex acts? And why would no inteligent woman ever feel the need to rationalize her own weakness by arguing that her perversion actually expands her mind?
I can only assume it has something to do with licking your own nipples.