It Isn’t Not Ironic

So I read a good blog post today about how it can be hard to take pleasure in irony anymore. The blog post linked to this Onion article which I read and enjoyed – but also felt a bit uncomfortable about.

The thing is, I totally sympathize with irony-fatigue. I remember last year when my friends were trying to think of a theme for their party and after listening to 30 or 40 ironic suggestions (Ninjas! Pirates! Prince!) I suggested that the theme be “Sincerity”. The idea was that every thing you wear, say and do at the party has to be sincere. If you are ironic or insincere, you get booted from the party. No one liked my suggestion.

The blog post suggested that ironically appreciating something like Saved by the Bell is dumb because everyone knows it’s bad. When jock-o babes n’ beer type bars are having Saved by the Bell theme nights, are you really appreciating SBTB on a new and different level? I feel that way about a lot of things. Born Again Christians everywhere love ugly Christmas sweater parties. And very few groups of people have less of a sense of humor than Born Agains.

Brain-dead kids in tight jeans sing Journey songs at karaoke. The Jean Teasdale look-alike in the Fashion Bug clothes hosts a bad movie night at her apartment. If the point of irony is to appreciate something on a level different from the mainstream, if it’s about separating yourself from the people that really like bad things – then what’s left of irony when everyone is in on the joke?

Plus, I tire quickly of people whose entire personality is one, big snarky joke.

But back to the Onion article. The headline “Aging Gen-Xer Doesn’t Find Bad Movies Funny Anymore” made me blush a bit. I mean, I am a person who has a Disorderlies movie poster in her living room. I rent good movies all the time and let them sit, gathering dust, while I watch Murder She Wrote and movies where Chuck Norris fights the undead. I have a blog dedicated solely to Steven Seagal movies. Am I that person? Am I a person who spends all their time distancing themselves from feeling with irony and tsk-tsk-ing sincerity?

I thought about it and I think the answer is “No” (well, mostly). I think there is a difference between “loving” something and just plain loving something – and I love bad movies. It’s true that I laugh at them. But I really love how weird and unique bad/cheap movies can be. I think you can find real moments of joy in quote unquote bad movies.

When I think about the things I like that are memes or popular punching bags for hipsters, in most cases, I really, sincerely enjoy those things. I really, actually enjoy Journey. I really, truly adore Fleetwood Mac. Just because I’m aware of (and sometimes laugh at) Steve Perry’s pants or Stevie Nick’s former cocaine addiction and weird scarves doesn’t mean that I don’t truly love their music. Or think about a show like The Mighty Boosh. I think that is a show that is fully aware of its place in pop-culture – but I doubt you’d find a single fan of the show that would say it’s insincere.

And so I think it’s best to bury the whole dichotomy between sincerity and irony. I think it’s better to delineate between love that’s aware and love that’s unaware.

I am aware that Hard to Kill is a terrible movie, but I truly love it. It’s like being given exclusive access to a 13-year-old boy’s psyche. And if there are people who love Hard to Kill because they think it’s a truly good film and they don’t need any artsy-fartsy crap, they just want to see some guns blastin’ – then maybe I’m appreciating Hard to Kill on a different level from them. But it’s not from an ironic distance; it’s just that I’m aware of how goofy the movie is.

Everyone who’s intelligent and likes cool things goes through a phase in their teens and early 20s where they think they’re smarter than everyone. They’re the first person to really appreciate John Waters and when  they watch old re-runs of Golden Girls, they’re just laughing at the racist jokes and ridiculous fashions. I definitely went through this phase – in fact it was probably a longer phase for me than it was for others. And I still love John Waters and I still laugh at Bea Arthur’s weird, draping wardrobe and I still think I’m smarter than everyone. But my time is more limited and I have to admit to myself that if I’m spending time watching something after work, it’s because I truly enjoy it.

My Kidneys Work Just Fine, Thank You

Maybe she doesn't have kidneys...

So I’ve been getting in to yoga lately after having basically done no exercise for 3 years. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot of work to do. And I like yoga, I really do. But I’m having a bit of trouble with the whole yoga “culture”.

There’s a few facets of the yoga culture (hereafter YC) that really burn my ass. The first are the extreme number of Whole Foods Moms. WFMs are the people who show up to yoga like it’s their job. They’re usually in incredible shape, so call sour grapes here if you want, but for some reason I just can’t stand these women. They all have seriously fancy yoga mat carriers. They all seem to have incredibly expensive yoga apparel, a different ensemble for every class of the week. It seems they leave their (home birthed, natch) babies with the nanny and come to yoga in their (safe for the whole family!) SUVs and aside from intermittent charity work, this is all they do. They don’t believe in vaccinating their kids and they are the main offenders in terms of YC Facet That Burns My Ass #2.

This is the whole “detox” thing. WFMs love to talk about how yoga detoxes your body. In some ways I understand this, yoga can calm the mind and body after a stressful day. But what it can’t do is literally remove toxins from your body. Do you know what “detoxes” your body? Your kidneys and liver. Mine work just fine and no amount of “pushing forward from the heart” with my hands is going to change that.

The worst part of YC, I’ve saved for last. David Rakoff discussed this idea a bit in his excellent essay “And One Called Hell”. It’s the idea that somehow doing yoga counts as a “good deed”, a mitzvah as my Mom would say. It emphatically does not. Again, WFMs are some of the worst offenders, but hippies are bad too. Yoga is good for your mind and body, it’s an excellent and usually safe work out. But it does NOT help people in Haiti. You would think this goes without saying but I have heard quite a few people explain that they’ve used their meditation time to concentrate on those suffering. This is always said in such a way that it’s clear the speaker expects some kind of validation or thanks for her sacrifice. But I can guarantee that the people in Haiti who are still missing family member and hoping and praying every second that they will be found alive don’t give a flying fuck about some white broad in a $300 outfit in Portland, OR, meditating on their behalf.

Now I’m thinking I should have written about this in my other blog.

Not Worse Than Hitler. Not at All.

It’s a great day for common sense here in Oregon. Measures 66 & 67 passed, raising taxes on the top 2% of invididual income-earners and top-grossing businesses. Had these tax increases not passed, huge cuts to education and state services would had to have been made. Small businesses in Oregon surprisingly used their brain bones to figure out that they had children in public schools and that their work force depended on student loans and other services bound to be impacted by potential budget cuts and endorsed the increase. They were quoted as saying that the benefits of the tax increase outweighed the disadvantages. Hooray for brain bones!

But wait. Not everyone’s brains have bones. Nope. There are still idiotic Republicans who can’t think right. One of them was quoted in the NYT saying that “labor” bought the measures, raising the specter of fat, overpaid, corrupt unions fixing elections and taxing the poor rich guys so much that they can’t afford new monocles or whatever it is they buy with their huge piles of money. He also said that businesses were bound to leave Oregon for cheaper pastures now that they have been taxed into oblivion. In fact, one of the tax increases raised a $10 cost for businesses to $150. It has been $10 since 1930 so it’s easy to see why businesses might spend millions of dollars to pull up stakes here in Oregon – $140 is a lot of money!

No, the fact is that all of the idiotic flailing done by corporations and Republicans (can we just call these entities “Recorpricans”?) amounted to nothing at all. Businesses will compete here as they always have. Jobs will be increased, not decreased and unions don’t own jack shit. Businesses profit from society and so need to contribute to society. If bosses want an educated work force, they have an interest in making sure student loans are available. State services help everyone, not just those who slip through the cracks. Common sense won out today and I’m happy as hell about it. Thank you, Oregon.

It’s a Vagina. Not a Clown Car.

Below is a post I started writing like a year ago but apparently I got too angry and my head exploded in the middle of writing it. I just slapped a hasty ending on it.

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/90922

Today’s Worse Than Hitler Award goes to the Duggars; aka, History’s Greatest Monsters. And we need to talk about these…these monsters.

The Duggars are featured on a reality TV show on the Discovery Health channel. I will admit to never having seen this show. However, looking at the Duggar’s page on the Discovery channel website -it’s clear that the show, rather than condemning these maniacs, actually celebrates their deviant lifestyle.

For instance, listed under the heading “Fun Facts” their site says that Michelle Duggar has been pregnant 135 months of her life so far. Pregnant. Over 11 years. Years. And we’re calling this a FUN fact??

Aside from the disgusting implication that Mrs. Duggar is little more than a womb with arms (which, let’s face it, is true) Discovery channel clearly wants us to look at these so called “Fun Facts” with the attitude of “Wow. That’s pretty wild. That kind of lifestyle may not be for me, but more power to them. She’s a better woman than me.”

Slapped on ending coming up (lazy post – plus too enraged  to type clearly)…

I think we should pubically condemn this family. I think we should prominently mention the Quiverfull cult they belong to. And then…can’t someone sneak into Michelle Duggar’s home and sterilize her?

Amerikkkan Girl Doll

The Un-Housed Doll

When I was an undergraduate PoliSci student, one of my professors asked us to write a paper on the American Girl Doll phenomenon. I learned more than I ever wanted to know. For starters, that the girls who own these dolls can take them to the American Girl Doll Store and go to a beauty salon to have the doll’s hair styled.

In my paper I focused on the idea that children were encouraged to purchase services for things that they would traditionally have done for themselves and I related this to the American economy at large. For instance, AGD owners pay to have the doll’s hair styled. But wasn’t one of the thrills of doll ownage before AGD that you could style her hair? Or, in my case, cut it with scissors and color it in with markers to give the doll a psyche patient/Debbie Harry look?

While our economy increasingly turns out disposable products intended to last only weeks before being replaced, I wrote that even the creative aspect of having and caring for dolls was being farmed out to a corporation, for a hefty fee of course.

Other students focused on a few of the other issues AGD brought to the surface. For example, these dolls run upwards of a $100. When a little girl has one, it gives her status – everyone knows her mommy/daddy can afford to give their little angel one of these ridiculous dolls. What happens to the girls whose parents can’t afford these dolls? Are they ostracized? Maybe not, but at the very least, questions of class come into play in the AGD discussion.

Now, it seems that AGD has just introduced a $95 “Homeless Girl” doll. All of the AGD come with a book that tells the owner her story. So there’s a Depression Era doll, an African-American doll, blah blah. So now there’s a Homeless Doll. A $95 homeless doll.

At first I was incredulous. I thought to myself : “This is fucking so STUPID!”. But I was forced to reconsider my stance after reading this article. The New York Post – bastion of red-faced, blustery conservatism – has gotten their panties in a bunch over this doll too. They say the doll is trying to “politically indoctrinate” their children. What to make of this?

The NYP says the story of the doll – that the mother is left by the father and slides down the economic ladder until the girl and the mom are living in the family car – teaches women that men are bad amongst other things. Well, of course, this is ridiculous. But now I’m left wondering what to think. I think the NYP article screams of white male privilege. How dare AGD hatch a character that represents, if not a section of the owners of AGD, at least some of the families they might know!

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with AGD humanizing the homeless, especially in a demographic that is likely growing up with the “Poor People are Lazy” story of how the world works. But, then I’m left with the irony of the $95 homeless doll, clutched to the tiny bosoms of girls whose parents represent the upper 1% of income. I have no conclusion on this. I suspect the answer is gray and complicated and more than I can wrestle with while at work today. But I am interested to hear what folks think. If you read this and you have an opinion, I’d like to hear it in the comments.

RIP John Hughes

Bad principal

So I’m taking time out from being completely enraged today (not really – my car got broken into last night and I’m apoplectic over Sarah Palin’s completely fabricated “death panel” bullshit – but whatevs) and instead I want to talk briefly about John Hughes.

There’s been a lot of John Hughes memorializing (my favorite is here). I’m going to add to the noise. The thing is, John Hughes, for me, almost perfectly described the arc of my growth from child to angry adolescent to mind-bogglingly galled and furious adult.

In the beginning there was Breakfast Club. I watched this movie over and over and over and then again for good measure with my best friend Sarah after school. The movie captivated me by displaying teenagers and all of their angst. I wasn’t yet a teen, but I wanted desperately to be one and to have my angst really mean something, man. And the music – that movie’s soundtrack – you can’t fault it. I still, when I dance, think of Molly Ringwald’s boots and her fancy footwork at the end of that movie.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink – all of these were home videos I owned and watched regularly. They all had a hand in shaping me. Most importantly, they were around at a time when I was extremely innocent. I didn’t mind stereotypes. I didn’t mind having my heartstrings tugged at. And, even though I know I couldn’t have stayed that way, I’m glad to know that I was once so open and unskeptical. Those are good things for a child  to be.

When I revisited the movies as a teenager I started to see what many Hughes critics see. The rampant racism (Long Duk Dong? Do we really need to hear a gong every time he’s on screen? And wasn’t the actor who played him – Gary Wantonabe – Japanese? I guess they all look the same to John), the broad characters, the stereotypes, the generic plot devices, the tropes. They’re actually pretty easy to see. As a teenager I saw all of these things, but I still liked his films. They became a guilty pleasure.

Now, as an adult, I actively revile most of John Hughes’ work. I wrote a paper as an undergraduate Political Science major about Hughes’ movie Curly Sue and his decision to cast actual homeless people in the roles of homeless people (and then later to fire them and use actors because the actual homeless people didn’t look “homeless enough” – Baudrillard’s head probably exploded).

Watching Ferris Beuller’s Day Off (a film I never liked) has me invariably yelling at the screen the whole time. Beuller is a bully, psychopathically self-obsessed. To steal from the AVC:  here’s Eric Cartman misquoting Ferris on South Park:  “Life goes pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while and do whatever you want all the time, you could miss it.”’

Home Alone is a horrible, morally reprehensible, shitty film. In the beginning of the film, Macaulay Caulkin’s parents and family are borderline abusive. The film sets you up to identify with the kid – but it goes so over the top that it left me thinking that he would be better off with social services. It certainly didn’t set me up to feel good about mother and son reuniting in the end. This is all not to even mention the tortures Joe Pecsi goes through. I was rooting for the bad guys in this movie like a lot of people I know.

That’s the problem with Hughes’ films. They go so far out of their way to manipulate your emotions that when it’s time for the sickeningly sweet ending where all is forgiven, I’m still hating, not just the villains, but everyone on camera. Which brings me here to my adult form where I am snotty and dismissive of John Hughes’ work and his crappy suburban values.

Here’s a secret though (and it may well be the secret to Hughes’ success in general): Whenever I see someone with a mole on their face I still say “It’s Mole-y Russell’s wart” – quoting Uncle Buck. I and everyone else you know still incessantly quotes Jeffrey Jones in Ferris Beuller saying “nine times“. There’s always an applicable Planes, Trains and Automobiles quote handy – like “Those aren’t pillows!”. Meaning that, in the end, Hughes’ films are part of our pop-culture landscape.

I can rail against Hughes’ disgusting racism in Family Vacation, and every other movie he’s ever made. I can barf blood and blab about Hughes’ spirited defense of the status quo. I can even write all this crap on my blog about how, as soon as I grew a brain, I realized John Hughes was lame. But I’m still quoting him, I’m still thinking about his movies. And what I think is that anyone who’s not moved when Steve Martin brings John Candy home for Christmas, and anyone who doesn’t hate Paul Gleason when he threatens to hit Judd Nealson is a person I don’t want to know.

Crying on the Interweb

So yesterday on the drive home from work, I was listening to an episode of This American Life on my ipod. This American Life usually has a few stories that it covers during its hour, and one of them caught me unaware as I coasted home. I love TAL and I’m often touched by their stories. But this one had me in tears.

It was about a little known Senate hearing that took place just recently (I suggest you listen to the broadcast, since I can’t convey the tragedy of it here, the link is above) wherein Senate panels discussed a healthcare practice called “rescission” with the CEOs of 3 major insurance companies.

You see, if you have private insurance, and you contract one of 1400 expensive illnesses, the insurance company will go back through your application with a fine toothed comb and “rescind” your insurance when they find something amiss (which they somehow, always do). For instance, one man who had contracted cancer I think had his policy rescinded when the company found that the insurance salesman who had sold him his policy had written his weight down wrong and neglected to show it to the man to confirm.

The insurance companies make their forms intentionally difficult to fill out so that when a person gets an expensive illness, there’s always a reason to rescind. The interesting thing about the senate hearing was that this policy is so heinous, that reps on both sides of the isle were audibly outraged. They sound disgusted with the CEOs of the companies. One Republican from Texas even tells the CEOs he’s on their side in terms of health reform, but that if they’re going to do something this evil, he can’t help them.

The part that really got me was the testimony of a woman who was diagnosed with an aggressive type of breast cancer. She needed an immediate double mastectomy. When she went to get her surgery approved, the company went through her application and decided that a “dermatitis” she had reported when she applied had been pre-cancerous and so her cancer was deemed a pre-existing condition. The woman then had her dermatologist call the insurance company and the doctor begged them to not cancel the woman’s policy. He said the dermatitis she had reported was nothing more than acne and he could prove it with her medical records. The insurance company was unmoved and it ended up being months before the woman could get her surgery. By then the cancer had grown sizeably.

To think that it’s leagal for insurance companies to let you pay your dues for years and then, when you need the insurance, revoke it is complelety ludicrous – but it is in fact legal. Luckily this hearing seemed to enrage both GOPs and Dems and recission is likely to be outlawed as a part of the new healthcare legislation.

Hello Again, Starring Shelly Long

So yeah. I’m here writing again thanks to my good friend who informed me that people did, in fact, read my blog. Also, I’m totally angry (as usual) about stuff.

Don’t you hate stuff? The stuff I hate today is the Google Headlines feature on my igoogle homepage.  I like to see what the “Top Stories” are, not because I think the “Top Stories” must be the most important stories, but rather to get an idea of what people are interested in reading. The tone of the stories’ headlines.

Obama’s Been Rockin’!

I have to admit that the appointment of cabinet members by Obama and his asinine choice of Cap’n Saddleback to appear at the inauguration had me concerned that Obama would be just another Clinton – a dealmaker, not the progressive leader I voted for.

But let’s look at what we have so far: He’s reversed the Regan legislation (albeit also reversed by Clinton and put back by Bush) that denied funding to any Family Planning Organization that offered abortion as an option.
He signed legislation today that strengthens labor unions and requires employers to inform their employees of their right to organize.

Finally, Some Good Old-Fashioned Comeuppance

Bill Sizemore was arrested today which is sweet, sweet justice for everyone in Oregon.Sizemore is the batshit crazy maniac responsible for myriad near-criminal ballot measures in this state. Every sane person in Oregon just laughed themselves shitty.