WRONG!

Does anyone remember The McLaughlin Group? I'm sure you do. My parents would put this on when we got home from church on Sunday during that interval between getting home and football being on, and it was pretty much just background noise while we made lunch. All the show's pundits really ever did was yell at each other.

There was something mildly endearing about the show; they yelled at each other but they at least had to do it face-to-face. And they had that rule where the pundits were supposed to yield anytime John McLaughlin spoke. You can tell McLaughlin likes being ridiculous. (Wow, just finding out this show is still on!) There's clearly something that's kept it going for three decades and it isn't just people turning it on for background noise. It was kind of surreal and entertaining to me as a teenager, plus McLaughlin's face looks like a bulldog's.

I think everyone to some degree secretly wants to be their own version of John McLaughlin, and ideology doesn't really matter as long as you yell loud enough. Just about everybody's got an easy way to yell something out and there's a whole mess of websites dedicated to telling us what certain people yelled. I suppose it's kind of always been this way at least on some level, but there's something dark beneath the excess of it all.

Please feel free to tell me that I'm just getting older and that things aren't always what they seem, but here's a thought: in the time before Mega-Internet's 24-hour social media/fake news and the 1 Million ways to Personalize every aspect of everything, the majority of issues/stories that rose to national attention seemed a bit more important. Sure you'd get hyper-media stuff like OJ Simpson's car chase, or Marv Albert being insane and biting women, or whatever, but things like that in national media weren't a daily occurrence.

Now there's more like an hourly occurrence of something made to seem vital to your experience as a human, somebody shouting their very firm beliefs, somebody else shouting back. Yesterday's NY Times made me laugh out loud with the headline "Maine Nurse Goes for Defiant Bike Ride" -- sure Ebola's important, but until we've got shorelines crawling with infected folks I don't think I need to know the hourly whereabouts of somebody who might not even have the disease. Look at this shit; this got feature story billing for a bit:

"She rode down a quiet paved road with her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur, followed closely by the police and a caravan of reporters. The couple rode less than a mile, then turned onto a graded gravel trail on a former railroad right of way flanked by pines. Ms. Hickox and Mr. Wilbur, wearing jackets in the crisp Maine morning, returned to the house an hour later."

The crisp Maine morning! Man that is stupid. That piece got two by-lines, by the way.

But on to the darker thing: regular ol' folks getting their random doings somehow published all over creation gives false hope to this weird desire we all have to be famous. That dang woman Hickox got her defiant bike ride covered! Then the universe starts to shrink and the possibility of me, me, me being at the center of everything seems somehow stronger. The carrot is just about in reach. All I have to do is be a little more opinionated, daring, or outrageous and everyone might watch me, too! Then everything will be OK.

But most people won't get noticed, at least not in the way they're hoping. Then there's a nasty letdown and really important things get pushed aside. It's a little hard to see where this all leads; it's not like it's necessarily bad to be entertained, but to be made to feel like you're not successful if enough people aren't watching/reading what you're doing is deeply sad.

My great hope is that it leads to whole swaths of people getting phenomenally bored with this lukewarm entertainment. I think it's already starting to happen, though I don't have any firm data to present. It's just a feeling. Everything looks a little upside-down at the moment, but it's a welcome new perspective. It's a good time to not really give a shit and do whatever you want; maybe nobody's looking but I think that's all the better. It definitely feels more real that way, and if nobody's listening you don't have to yell.

'Til next time; bye-BYYYE.

It's a liar...so everything it says is a lie.

Today I almost threw caution to the wind and submitted a very short thing I wrote to this new...thing; I'm not sure what to call it other than a Website:

www.really-short-stories.com

Short stuff is wonderful. In more recent memory, a fantastic short story by George Saunders called "Sticks" in his collection Tenth of December was one of my favorite things consumed in 2013. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's very short novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold is tied in my mind with Crime and Punishment as the coolest thing I read junior year in high school. Some of those Pixar short films they show before the full deal movie are nearly as good as the full feature.

So it's not really about length (haaa), right? It's about what you say; the ol' cliche, which turns out to be unequivocally true.

But boy does this website suck. They talk about wanting to compete with Buzzfeed lists and Vine videos; that's like putting a raw onion in the candy bar aisle. They call it Short Fiction for the A.D.D. Generation, and go on to say, "No, this won't be exactly like getting published, so think of it more as contributing to a collective of young writers looking to create fiction that your peers will actually read in it's [sic] entirety."

So you're gonna bash a whole generation for not reading--then ask them to read? I'm pretty sure the folks running this site don't really read too much either. If they did, they would know that the American short story is doing just fine. There's something like a billion and a half literary journals out there now and you have to just, you know, read and find the good stuff. Turns out when you do even a little exploring, there's plenty of brilliant writing to go around. All lengths and sizes are represented in wonderful ways (heeeee).

Besides, the real competitor to Buzzfeed doesn't even give a shit; and knocks short stuff out of the park anyway. 

And, hey, my own short thing is getting longer! (Is this bad joke getting old?) Not too long, though, and when it's done I'll probably post it here instead of submitting to some grubby website that wants to compete with tabloids.

But while you're here, check out another drum video I did a month or so ago and forgot to post:

I Did This

It's OK It's OK It's OK It's OK...

Here's a smattering of recent headlines that have nearly convinced me that most major media outlets are pretty close to giving up by simply making each of their headlines read, "HELP! PLEASE NOTICE ME! PLEASE! WE'RE COOL, RIGHT?!"

"Everything You Know About Breakfast Is Wrong" [Outside Magazine]

"Let's be honest: Hillary Clinton is Running for President" -- Subhead: "I mean, seriously." [Washington Post]

"Learning to Love Sugar Again" [The Atlantic] (Actual article title is 'Being Happy With Sugar,' which is just as dull, but the editors apparently felt they needed to, ahem, spice up the link title.)

"The Girl Who Was Raised By Monkeys?" [NPR] (insert inflection) This is a question? Were they expecting an answer?

"This Clever Site Tells You If Your Favorite Bar Patio Is Sunny" [Gizmodo] Well thank god; massive white-person problem = Solved.

I definitely don't think people are getting less creative, even though these headlines lack any creative effort. But there's so much content out there and major editors/publishers are just losing their minds. I do tend to think young, expendable web editors get hired in massive numbers, are overloaded with horrifying pressure to generate clicks, so they basically write bullshit. I believe this because I was one of these folks for a couple different institutions. My jobs didn't last and paid basically nothing--huh.

The worse side of this freak out by editors/publishers is that they'll tend to publish insanely extreme opinions (from any viewpoint) simply because they know it'll generate InternetOutrage, meaning clicks, money, and a lot of dumb stuff.

Take this recent George Will column in the Washington Post; only the most insane, clueless, downright evil-spirited person would not think twice about writing the phrase, "supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a 'sexual assault.'" (Just thinking about using snarky air quotes for "sexual assault" in a serious way, like Will does, makes me hyperventilate.)

It's easy to go on about how vile that column is: e.g. he tries to use his own arithmetic to tell you that sexual assault statistics are grossly exaggerated, when if you use your brain at all with the knowledge that it's pretty impossible to know exactly how many sexual assaults occur for any number of reasons, arithmetic kind of becomes useless; or this sentence: "...capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also non-consensual touching." Dear George: 1). you are a Grown White Man complaining that non-consensual sexual touching ought to be OK? 2). your "capacious definitions" are both things that only terrible people do.

But the publishers know exactly how vile that column is; it's why they published it. They know there'll be a whole slew of subsequent rebuttal columns and internet arguments about the whole thing, and they'll laugh all the way to the bank while nobody really learns a thing. I'm probably even feeding into it just a bit by writing about it myself. But I think it's massively important to be aware of how it's in many media outlets' best interests to generate nothing but outrage, fear, and anxiety; and it's equally important to exercise your free will to turn away from these articles (and in many cases the media outlets themselves) as fast as you can. Because...

The world, as a whole, isn't as bad as it seems through these lenses. This is not to say that there are not vast swaths of people who struggle for survival on a daily basis. In real life, there is an unassailable fact that not everybody is going to have everything they need. But a lot of things point toward a world that is considerably safer than it used to be, and we are, more or less, pretty unaware of it. These are really hopeful trends that should keep us moving and innovating into the future.

But I think we need an innovation of thought, because the negative things that are on the rise are not so easily tackled with major advances of media and technology. While gun homicides might be down over the last decade, gun suicides are way up. Diagnoses of anxiety disorders, particularly in the US, have skyrocketed over the last decade (this is more complicated than this little sentence, but still). Like Tom Waits says, way too many people seem to be confusing information with knowledge, and it's rattling their brains apart.

You know me, I won't ever claim to have all the answers, and sometimes I'll claim to have exactly zero answers. But I do believe that one major factor is a problem of perspective and mindset. If you do not believe things are going to be OK, you're probably never going to be very satisfied with what life hands you. If you always expect things to be perfectly shaped, you're going to miss a lot of the weird accidental beauty that's out there. If you can't see things from other people's perspectives, you're bound to run into trouble with some of the 6+ billion people in our contained sphere from which there are few escapes.

If you french fry when you're supposed to pizza, you're gonna have a bad time.

I am reminded of the character of Mario Incandenza in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest on an almost daily basis. He is physically and mentally deformed, is unintentionally hilarious, and is the single most compassionate, hopeful character in the book. He has a whole lot to be hopeless about, but it rarely shows.

I'm working on a little song that's based on a line of Mario's. For a little context, it's a kind of alternate reality and giant fans ('Air-Displacement Effectuators') surround Metro Boston and blow pollution up to Canada. Mario's roommate and brother Hal is losing his mind as they fall asleep talking, and Mario, in his own little way, is trying to calm Hal down:

"I like the fans' sound at night. Do you? It's like somebody big far away goes like: It'sOKit'sOKit'sOKit'sOK over and over. From very far away."

Then later in the same conversation, while not understanding a word Hal's just said in an anxious rant, Mario says:

"Hal, pretty much all I do is love you and be glad I have an excellent brother in every way, Hal."

To see with eyes unclouded

A quick update featuring things that have made my brain hiccup over the last month or so...

1. Here's a fun game to play; I call it Out of Context Anime:

Last night I re-watched Princess Mononoke after having downloaded it for the ultra low price of nothing. But webstealing (my new word) has its downsides, one of them being translation. A quick search finds the probably better-translated sentence in that scene as "Well, they say happy women make a happy village."

2. NPR recently covered a certain state's supreme court striking down said state's ban on same-sex marriage. (I'm refusing to look it up at the moment because I think it's actually remarkable that I can't remember off the top of my head what state it is, because these bans have been falling in so many places lately and that makes me happy). Within that coverage, NPR reported on how both sides felt. This included an audio snippet of a man from a Christian organization who disagreed with the ruling, saying without even the slightest hint of irony in his voice, that it's "not right for one side to feel persecuted against, to be made to feel like they are just wrong."

3. Overheard teenage conversation in CVS: "You smoked pot? Don't you know it gives you warts in your mouth?"


But in more uplifting news (burying the lede here just a bit), I'm having a story published in a new NYC-based journal called DenimSkin Review! The story is called Unsound and, since it's a bit long, they're spreading it out across a couple issues. The inaugural issue is out this Friday, May 30--if you're in the NYC area, apparently it will be in certain bookstores, cafes, etc. But no worries if not, you can also order one online. Check out their website or Facebook for more info on how to nab a copy.

Only bored as I get older

First, I'm going to apologize (because that's what I do); I usually like to be a little more optimistic than I think this post is going to sound. But it's Monday and life is again real, and these florescent lights are a little more irritating than usual.

One of the most boring things to me is when writers write about what just happened on TV. There was a MAJOR plot twist in The Good Wife! Somebody got annihilated on Game of Thrones! Robin Williams voices the genie AND the merchant at the beginning of Aladdin! (Just go with it.) What does it meeeeeaaannn?



Who is reading this shit? (Probably a lot of people, hence the articles' existence and their many accompanying advertisements...)

I don't particularly care about spoilers, though I do think it's odd that some people seem to need so strongly to blab. But I'm not really the kind of reader/watcher who gets upset knowing the basic plot points or even 'major' twists (I enjoyed Titanic just fine, thank you); and at least as far as mainstream TV is concerned, you can see a lot of these things from miles away. Like the Chekhov rule, when a gun is introduced to the story you can bet your ass it's getting fired. But I'm probably in the minority here; I can certainly understand people not wanting details given away.

So if you didn't watch the show, there's absolutely no reason to read the recap and plenty of reasons to avoid it. If you did watch the show, there's still no particular reason to read the recap. Other than to be told what it all meant, what it could have possibly meant, who did it, why did they do it, who else might have done it, where do we go from here, what was the setup, what's the fallout...these are all things the talented writers who created these shows are already doing for you, and will continue to do for you as you watch their story unfold. I get the desire to talk about it all, but it's not a need (just a very strong desire to not feel so lonely in this world...sorry, sorry that's the existential psychiatrist in me).

Most shows that make it to the popularity of things like Game of Thrones/Mad Men/The Good Wife/True Detective/whatever are there because, on some level, they are great and created by talented people. You should be damn sure that these talented people usually know how to make all things unfold with time (unless it's Lost and everybody's just making up nonsense), and eventually they make you realize that what happens isn't nearly as fun or important as why something happens and why the characters involved are so interesting.

I think this is the right moment to say what anyone reading this likely already knows: I'm way more of a reader than a watcher. So feel free to tell me that I'm perfectly capable of ignoring articles I find boring. You are correct. But should I have to? I don't know exactly what it says about our silly First World that two of the four main-slot articles on today's theatlantic.com are about TV shows, but I don't think it's entirely good. I know I can swim to safer Internet waters, but sometimes the thought of doing that is like standing in the supermarket's soup aisle confronted by a thousand different versions of tomato soup, and I haven't even looked at other kinds of soups and already I just want a fucking blanket and a pacifier...

Actually, I think I'm going to read outside. This has been Melvin Ralsh's florescent Monday morning; 'til next time, folks!

I Have a Question

Do you think people make up their own minds less often than they used to?

This is kind of an overly general question, the type I'm not usually too fond of, but I do wonder about some stuff...

When I was in college and liked writing music reviews a whole lot more than I do now, I had trouble shaking a bad habit of checking out other reviews of the same album to see where my opinion landed in the vast nothingness of music reviews. If I didn't like an album, I needed to double-check that other folks didn't like it either to make sure I wasn't an idiot, and this was way too easy to do. YouTube didn't even exist, and there weren't nearly as many blogs n stuff, but there was already an overload of opinions out there to Google. I could not stop doing this, but I can understand being younger, insecure, and not very confident about my musical taste/opinions. There were even a couple times I softened a review based, at least a little, on the fact that a bunch of 'professional' people had liked something I didn't. That's pretty hard to understand now.

So does the overabundance of Opinions out there mostly serve to feed our insecurities?

Are people actually more Opinionated now than ever before, or does it just feel that way because I spend a shitload of time on the internet, where Opinion is king?

Sometimes I get the feeling there are folks who get outraged by stuff only because a lot of other people got outraged by it; maybe this is no different than Time Before Internet, but it sure as hell seems to happen a whole lot faster and in larger quantities. Then it goes away and things move on more or less the same, but LO, we have ENTERTAINED ourselves. And probably somebody made a buck or two off it.

I have a question.