Saturday, July 11, 2009

How The 1980's Ruined EVERYTHING.

Everybody have fun tonight. Everybody just shut the fuck up tonight. Can someone please explain to me why we look back so fondly on the 1980's? Its is the most overrated decade since the 1750's for pete's sake! Every club has an 80's night, and everybody has fond memories of the culture shaping decade. I cannot deny that the decade was culture defining. It is one of the biggest popular culture upheavals in american history. Art as we know it was being redefined, music, film, fashion and lifestyle. 

Ever since the decade ended we haven't wanted it to stop. We have 80's parties and movie nights. We fill mixtapes with the songs of Dexy's Midnight Runners and Culture Club. I really don't know why we love it so much, since it ruined our conscience when it comes to art. It is the defining turning point of when our popular culture started going down the tubes. The vapid pleasures of reality TV were just a stones throw away. The 1980's ruined everything!

The 1980's Ruined music. Right after Punk's first wave was ending and the second wave was starting up, someone learned how to make punk music shitty and call it new wave. By adding synthesizers and drum machines we stole the soul of rock n' roll and gave it to Pop.  This is when the reign of Rock n' Roll came to its end. When It would eventually be given the label "Alternative". The 1980's revitalized top 40 hits over albums a trend that lovingly continues and gives us danceable single use songs. We got a taste and we have never looked back. We want to be just like eveyone else. 

The 1980's ruined film. The 70's were the last decade in which the director was in control. The 1980's gave birth to formula movies. We've been telling the same stories and making a shitload of money doing it for 30 fucking years. It all feels so hollow now, but we show up in droves because we are culturally stupid. Kate Hudson is a frigid lion tamer, oh god the must see movie of the millennium. These A plus B equals ending C was born and raised during the regan years.

We've lost all our irony. Its no longer hip to be square. Art has been given only to those willing to dig through all those copies of "Bride Wars" and "Transformers" to find "Waltz with Bashir". Art is a gift to those who want something better. Its easy to become a snob, that you watch better movies, read better books and listen to better music. Plain fact is you do, but the plain fact is Micheal Bay is laughing all the way to the bank. 

At the same time, I the art snob am not impervious. I love movies from the 1980's and love those disposable 80's hits. But I know the difference between it and art. Why? Because I've worked at it. Also, Im a pop culture whore. Entertainment Is a fine thing but it isn't the only reason to enjoy a film or a band. Strive for something more. Its almost like eating better. No one's saying dont have a fucking candy bar sometimes. But eat something good for you. Even if ut have subtitles or a plot that dosen't end with "and they lived happily ever after..." Even if it has a chord structure of more than three or isn't "club material". 




Thursday, April 9, 2009

The most difficult question....

Im not saying that there is an easy answer to life biggest questions. I think anyone who thinks so is seriously lacking if they think that they are easy. Recently, I've been thinking about God. you know, like you do. I know right? run from the room in terror! I grew up with relgion and its always on my mind. I've gone from deeply spirtual to well deeply skeptical. Those who know me, know its a constant sore point of discussion with me.
This is a big deal especially for my family who feel there son,brother is indeed headed directly for hell. The biggest question i've been asking myself lately is about life its self and its suffering. Recently there was a murder of a 7 year old girl who was killed rather quickly and then stuffed in a suitcase and dumped into a ravine. How does anyone see God in that? She grew up in a trailer park, knowing nothing beyond Hannah Montana dolls and Ponys. Big questions do not phase someone this young. Heaven and Hell and eternity all that. So, God is supposed to be this loving person that has a plan for us all? Try explaining that without making all sorts of theological excuses for yourself. If God is THAT mysterious then he truly hates us. If God some how did it to teach someone somewhere a lesson about something that might come in handy at sometime in some place. Come ON.
I saw Ty Pennington give a dying man's family a house....and all I could think about was how many families watched there father die this year and didn't get a fucking dream home. Got left with nothing. It's unfathomable how unfair life is? and yet there are still christians who believe that prayer will change things....maybe it changes some but what about those who are left wanting?
Fact remains we live in a fucked up world....There is no other world for it. Day in and Day out a million little tradgedies will occur to the perfectly nice and the perfectly evil. I don't know if there's a god or not. I'd bet that the God people keep telling me exists dosen't though. I just can't comprehend that God. The one that absolutely is a certian way because the bible industputibly says that he is. Sorry I don't buy it.
Yet I cannot fully abandon the concept of some being that made us (through evolution). These are my thoughts, that is all.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Chapter Preview.

.There are many people who faced the formidable challenges of the crushing weight of life, have escaped or reverted. I am far to deeply addicted to pop culture to do anything great with my life. What I truly need to find myself is to follow the path of the drifter and live a life where my ghosts are truly confronted but im too hooked in. There is no tune in, to drop out, or turn on. What I need is a cabin deep in the woods, to emerge with the kind of masterpiece plan for my life. I want to be so much more than the cautionary tale that all the parents whisper to each other in church to avoid the reality that there kids are normal human beings rather then super pious super beings.

Not only do I not get me, not understand why I behave the way I do but I don’t get our fucking country. We see tragedy on a daily basis but its never appalling till it’s on our front door. War seems foreign. We see horror and injustice all day long but somehow it doesn’t seem to change or break us. I want to do more, I want to get more involved. I said I wanted to change the world and maybe I want to save it. Study what is truly right and truly moral and not just what ive been told. I truly can say to you that I don’t think that ill will ever be a conservative because I see it as selfish. I see them as looking out for themselves and not others. Yet here are people who champion family values and morality to the highest degree. I just don’t see it. Maybe it’s the actions of the leaders and the loud ones now. Maybe it’s the kind of morals that seem similar to Victorian style oppression. But I guess It doesn’t really matter I just want the world to know I give a shit about its problems.

Oh, the revolutions ive staged in my head.

There is no fucking plan. All we can come up with is candy colored alert coding and diving under the impenetrable protection of school desks.

There are things worth fighting for but our routines are too set. Maybe il use this as an excuse as for why I chose to give up on life. I don’t want to fall into rut so deep and garrulous that life dosent give me pause anymore. That nothing will effect me getting up going to work, perhaps grabbing lunch from taco bell, spending my last five minutes of work playing tetris, and meeting the wife at pier one because we need a new rug. In the mean time other peoples lives are being effected. While I am sitting there trying to decide whether the crapet will literally match the drapes some kids are being kidnapped and forced to fight in wars. While I go refill my soda someone two blocks away shivers in the cold doing nothing but sitting in regret. My bleeding heart just needs a way to tie it all together and perhaps I can plug the dyke and live my life. Perhaps its time to figure it out.

Is it just me or do you think we are just addicted to altering our perception? That people drink or smoke weed or et all because the world is just that mundane. Do we perhaps hope that our metamorpahsis will turn into something different. ` `
This isn’t the end of the world, the apocalypse just likes to hang here in the air recycling itself over and over and again leaving us empty and just comfortable enough to be surprised at the actual moment of our death.

We are just told stories and recycled ideas. This is the world post life. Is anyone else unsatisfied with the piss poor way in which we live? I feel like the obsolete news caster in network. “Im mad as hell but im going to settle for flavor of love reruns and beverly hills chuiaha.” I’m not saying that good art does not still exit but the rate by which crap is fed through the pipes these days is just simply astronomically sad. Im just going to end up yelling at children with my cane sooner rather than later. Just like the man in apartment 6c.

I may have indeed alluded to the fact that I live with an older client base of people, and the reason for that is the fact that I live in a retirement complex. My apartments are the Lake Fitzgerald apartments in Anahiem California. How I came to live here however is a story for yet another time.

I will again reiterate: I kissed Franny Lunachese on the mouth last night!

Moments that happened the night before good or bad tend to linger above you while you sleep. Sometime you can even be up for fifteen minutes or so before you remember that they were there. Such was that morning. Another day of floating around, never sure if ill come down. How it is, how it should be.

We are a generation lost in a sea of misinformation and endless communication. You can blog, you can bicker, you can txt , you can bicker, you can call, myspace, facebook, Bicker, Bicker, Bicker, you can twitter all you want but its different then it was! No it ain’t, no it ain’t but you gotta know the territory! Call me Disaffected. Call me Disparing. Just don’t ever say that I didn’t post a bulletin about it. I have watched those younger than me be born into the future, while I have just grown up around it. I have had parents who tried to shield me from what they perceived as a threat when indeed it was no threat at all. I think Im finally beginning to think that while there is no easy solution to the path I blaze. Blaze forward I must. I want answers now. I want to know what could have been done. I am like a spiritual detective now looking at the root causes.

Zooey fucked me up. She was just one of those epic girls that ruined my life. Its interconnected to the steep economic downtown in my parents and I relationship even though they didn’t know it. I guess the real connected factor is me though. I guess that I made choices right? Don’t I need to take some responsibility? I mean sure, a girl was mean, ok. Sure my parents are too controlling and overbearing but something’s are just plain my fault.

Evangelical Christian tend to live in a world wear there are two sides. Where there is good and there is evil. They hate postmodernism because they believe that those people have no truth. Im so tired of all our philosphys being constantly at war with ourselves. I mean I was once one of those kids. I read left behind books and thought that’s how the world was going to end. Its all about the one truth.

You have questions? They have answers. They surround them selves with yes men. It’s the surety of your conviction. Now parents are a certain way even without relgion as a factor but the Christian relgion provides even a higher authority whith which to get your point across. Not only are they your parents but they almost become priest like, with what would seem an almost direct connection to god.

As I grew older I remember all the fights. No one wants to be told there not spiritual enough. I had no desire to attend bible studies and sing worship songs. I feel weird, for being so sure, none of this felt right. I started to see chinks in who people were telling me God was. Was I sinful? Was god playing tricks on me? I just couldn’t do it. Maybe I could have tried harder for them though.

Perhaps I could have tried more things and tried to be a better Christian. If I was strong perhaps I would not at this time doubt God’s Existence. Logically between you and I, I think everyone has a level of doubt. I just don’t think you can be sure, but that good ideas are fine. Strong thought out moral convictions are fine. Oppressing people is not. It was once thought to be moral to have black slaves. No one would think so now.

I just think the fundies aren’t questioning enough. God said it, I believe it and that settles it may work for you but what about the rest of the world. You demand we act like you. That we walk, talk, and think like you. This is the kind of thinking that’s given us the last eight years of a bush presidency. Trying to be black and white in an increasingly grey world.

I whish I could talk with my parents about the thoughts that I am having this day. I whish I could tell them that I respect what they believe but that they need to respect my own beliefs and convictions. So we disagree? Fine lets talk it through but we can’t do what these pundits do. We cant live in a world of speculative discourse. He said, she said bullshit doesn’t work in religion or politics.