Father’s Day and “holidays” like it (I’m quoting holidays because it seems like the word ought to mean more than just “give dad/grandpa a card and a pair of socks”; maybe this is unjustified; in any case I’ll stop because it’s annoying to add them every time I type the word in the context of this post) annoy the hell out of me for a few reasons and then please me for one special reason. They’re one of those strange concoctions that can simultaneously make my blood boil and make me smile inwardly, the only kind of smiling that’s really meaningful, I think.

First, it’s obnoxious to think that we need to designate certain Sundays throughout the year to honor this or that family member. If I’m appreciative of my mother, I damn well better let her know it every single day rather than somewhere in May (I never remember which weekend it falls on) when I give her flowers, a card with a hastily scribbled but nonetheless sincere note, and maybe some potted plants for the backyard – or a book, which amounts to all three. And the same goes for fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, and anybody else that I’m appreciative of. And if I’m not appreciative of this or that family member, I’m all of a sudden obligated to pretend I am, which is certainly a poor way to live considering I’ve only got 40-90 years on this Earth and only so much time to pretend to feel a certain way about certain people. That’s asking too much.

Second, it’s unnerving that these holidays exist at all. I mean, what does it say about our country (or the human race in general) if we have all these holidays prescribing when we ought to celebrate a certain person’s existence? I wonder: do these holidays continue to exist because of their original intentions, that of setting aside a gentle day in which to specially thank a certain person, or do they continue to exist because people need these sorts of reminders in life which bring to their attention at least once a year that  ”Hey, there are several people around you who care about you and sacrifice for you so thank them and try to return the favor in the future?” I’m not convinced that the latter is completely wrong and totally bogus. I know that I forget about those around me who help me in myriad ways to continue living and thriving and going to school and all those things I take for granted. So perhaps they persist because most people don’t take enough time – because we’re all selfish and egotistical – to honor our own little green elves that run around and do so much for us without even thinking of any sort of award or recognition.

Then again, perhaps that’s a little too generous of an analysis. In any case, it’s something I think about so that’s really all that matters. And the reason this is unnerving is because every time one of these Sundays rolls around I’m reminded of the fact that most people in the world probably don’t think enough about how they got to be so successful, or at least not as unsuccessful as they might have been otherwise. It’s often a strong combination of environment and other people, rather than simply our own headstrong ambition, persistence, and ego. And so when Father’s Day rolls around I think about how lots of people, certainly myself included, don’t spend enough time appreciating the help they get without which they’d probably never have graduated from anywhere (example: prestigious northeastern university), never have gotten laid (example: if Dad didn’t let me drive the car that night . . .), or continued living at all (example: Why not end it? Wait, people care about me! Alas!). And this is why it’s unnerving, because it’s a reminder four times a year (or however many there are) that people sorta suck, like a lot. Like, people are just not very nice to each other and they don’t do the right thing and they often only care about themselves or their own clan and they’d much rather see YOU dead rather than their own grandmother (and let’s face it, me too!). So that sucks. Not a very happy Sunday afternoon for me.

Third, there is a reason that makes me smile inwardly, as I mentioned above, because of these sorts of holidays. It’s during, say, Father’s Day, since today is that day and I was just reminded of it, that these holidays are institutionalized reasons for families to get together and just try not to think about crummy jobs, crumbling marriages, bad breakups, shitty bosses, and whatever else is particularly nasty in their lives. It’s a federally mandated reason to smile and be happy and eat unhealthy but delicious foods and just all around recall better times (because history is always happier through the rear-view mirror) without worrying about Monday or Tuesday or grandma’s surgery or dad’s lawsuit or the plight of the Lakers (if it’s a noticeably rough regular season (2004-5 would be a good example). These are days when we’re supposed to see a lot of people we don’t see as often as we maybe should. These are days when we’re supposed to have fun, smile, laugh, play silly games, remember sillier games from yesterday, and watch Tiger Woods maybe win his 1,000th tournament (though Father’s Day 2010 he’s not doing so hot).

It’s this third reason that always softens the the hard heart inspired by the first two, and it’s this third one that overshadows the other two altogether. This is rather sappy, sentimental you might say. And it is. It really is. But it’s those sappy, sentimental puppy dog moments we so often laugh at that tend to be really important. But a distinction needs to be made: it’s the important sentimental moments that are meaningful. Too often we well up with predetermined “Oooohs and Awwwwws” at classic puppy dog moments (old people kissing, five year-olds kissing, infants doing infantile things, Hugh Grant’s onscreen character realizing he’s a douchebag and then apologizing) without thinking about how in doing so we’re devaluing all of them as a collective. It’s the important sentimental moments that truly deserve our “Oooohs and Awwwwws,” like when Neil Young sings “Hey hey, my my, rock and roll will never die,” or when you rediscover those dusty old Tintin comic books and remember younger days, or when you look at your significant other and know that she knows you love her.

But I see I’ve rapidly degenerated into total fuzzball sappy sentimental “Oooohs and Awwwwws” and it’s quickly becoming meaningless even here. So I’ll leave off. But just know that as tiresome, turgid, and torpid as these holidays seem (and really, they are all those things without doubt), there are some positives to them that simply can’t be ignored and those murderous Triple T’s back there have to be overlooked if only because greater things lie ahead and so help me Possibly Existent Supernatural Being, we have to hold on to these things like they’re the only thing keeping us from all flying away.

Because I think they are.

So it’s from an entirely impartial position that I strongly urge Todd McFarlane to just go back to making comic books. Seriously, bro, it makes perfect sense.

Here’s why:

McFarlane got his “big break” doing Spiderman comics for Marvel in the 80′s and 90′s. He was, remarkably, a superstar in the comic world. His art is just rad and bomb and totally effin amazing. He’s just a great artist with incredible vision. In 1992 he started the Spawn comic franchise which became incredibly popular, making McFarlane even more of a superstar and further proving that the guy knew what he was doing. The franchise, um, spawned (sorry) a cartoon, a toy line, a clothing line (really?), and even a movie.

It was incredible. Here was a guy doing exactly what he’d always wanted to do: make comics the way he wanted to make them, on his own terms. He was the hero of every kid sitting in fourth period chemistry class drawing weird-looking shit on his notebook paper. He was the Led Zeppelin of comics to all these kids. He proved that if you wanted to do it you could do it. And it’s not just that McFarlane was successful, but he was also good.

But eventually, like all amazing people, Todd was corrupted by power and glory. He wanted to do more stuff, he wanted to be involved in all sorts of things he had no business being a part of, and eventually his hubris-filled rise to stardom came tumbling down. He’s not quite at rock-bottom but he mise well be.

In 2002 a case was ruled not in his favor regarding copyright issues with Neil Gaiman, another superhero in the comic/graphic novel world. The problem? Todd had begun freelancing the Spawn comics in order to work more on starting his own McFarlane Empire (which he succeeded in doing, even if it eventually came crashing down around his ankles). So Gaiman creates some characters, an agreement is made, Todd breaks the agreement to start a toy line without paying Neil and the whole thing goes to court, Todd loses, his company goes bankrupt, and he’s sitting in a pool of his own filth trying to figure out just what happened.

So what does he do? He tries to rebuild the empire. He’s still got an incredibly gifted creative mind so he’s put that to work but only so far as it helps the empire building, like if Alexander the Great had only gone into battle if it led to the acquisition of more territory. He’s done freelance things himself, such as designing the toys for Microsoft’s Halo 3, among other things, and he’s even been inking some new Spawn stuff, but inking isn’t writing/penciling/inking, it’s just inking.

Todd, go back to your roots. Go back to what made you happy in the beginning. Either pick up Spawn wherever it currently is (and with so many copyright issues, the story has been jumping around, going crazy, starting over, skipping sections in order to avoid legal issues, so that would be interesting to attempt) or just start something new. Spawn as a comic and as a character was incredible and it was perfect for the time, and a lot of the things you did were wonderfully creative and powerful given the deluge of media and the realization that all those talking heads were beginning to mean a lot more than we suspected, which Spawn analyzed and exploited.

So reach deep within and find something else. The thing with an artist is that they never stop creating. And when they do, it’s time to give it up. The other side to that, though, is that an artist only gives it up when they surrender. So don’t surrender, Todd. Put down the dreams for resurrecting your empire and pick up the pen. Trust me. It’ll do you all kinds of good. Like a cake. Like a big fat delicious fatty cake. And I would know about cakes, that’s for sure.

Not to constantly tie-in Lakers and/or Kobe Bryant, but Todd and Kobe are very similar. They want to be the Man constantly and for the same reasons. But here’s the thing: if Kobe turns down a tough shot in order to give Ron Artest an open three, it’s the same as if Kobe had made the tough shot, perhaps even better because it shows he wants to win any way he can rather than by making the toughest shots and getting all the glory. Same with Todd. Todd wants to be big and powerful and emperor-like. But if he would just go back to doing comics, writing and creating amazing characters and stories, he would get all the attention he wants, and it would all be positive, too, not just “Well, I have to pay attention to this Todd fellow because he’s so powerful.” Neil Gaiman seems to do what he loves and not try to be anything more and he’s perhaps the most respected living person working in the fields of comic books and graphic novels (with the exception of a certain living legend, Stan Lee, but he’s like outside the spectrum of rankings, right?).

So Todd, and Kobe I guess, stop trying to be The Man, and just do what you love. In the end, you’ll win in spite of yourself. And if not, well, there’s always delicious cake.

1st – Kobe Bryant is still a mysterious player. Unlike, say, a Michael Jordan or a Karl Malone, who were guaranteed night in and night out to hit a certain number of shots, finish with a certain number of points, and do so with a certain measure of efficiency, Kobe still goes out and gives you something different every night and it’s frustrating as both a fan of the Lakers and a fan of basketball because it’s hard to get a read on him. I mean, this is the guy who somehow summoned the will and energy to repeatedly do amazing things, like 81 in a game, a stretch of 50+ and 60+ games that only Wilt equaled in the wildly out of control 60′s when there were forty more rebounds and forty more shots available every game. And yet he’ll go out and do strange things, like in the 2008 NBA Finals, Game 5, where he started jacking up ridiculous threes near the end because he knew if they went in he would be seen as that much more of a hero. Or in the 2010 Finals, Game 7, where he couldn’t hit the basket if it was the ocean and he was in a boat (his own metaphor for tonight’s game btw), and a lot of those shots were ill-advised (though in his defense, tonight’s game saw many attempts at the end of the shot clock where one of the other Lakers would ditch the ball on him, basically saying “Uh, you shoot it, k?”). I don’t get him. One minute he’s the most ruthless assassin ever, killing everyone, laying waste to the game of basketball. The next minute he looks nervous or jumpy and nothing is going in and he seems to be dribbling the ball off of his foot every third possession. I just don’t get it. Maybe I never will. Who knows. In some areas he’s better than Jordan (ability to score in a variety of ways, though Jordan seemed to do everything more efficiently night in and night out), and in some areas he’ll never get there (being able to always hit 30 no matter what and never shoot below 43% while doing it). But whatever. The guy won, he was better than everybody else even considering his strange Game 7.

2nd – Pau Gasol was not the MVP though a lot of people tried to argue this. Their main problem: they just say “His stats were better in the Laker wins” which doesn’t really do much in terms of making his case. This isn’t to knock Pau, but to argue that he’s the MVP is to belittle Kobe, which I think happens more often than not because people don’t truly get what Kobe does for the Lakers that no one, even Pau, does. To be quick about it: every Laker will tell you that when Kobe is on the floor, they feel more relaxed, and it’s not just because they can throw him the ball and he’ll more often than not make something happen. They all say, and this was a popular topic after Game 6, that when he’s on the floor, they play better simply because he’s standing next to them. They kept reiterating, one after the other, that just by the mere fact of his existence on the hardwood rather than on the bench, they would focus more, play better defense, rotate the ball on the offense, and just all around play better basketball regardless of whether Kobe is getting the ball every possession and making something happen. That’s something I haven’t heard about any other player in the game today, that simply by virtue of a player’s existence on the court the other four players are more focused, more energized, and better equipped to play basketball. It’s crazy. And you know what? I believe it. The bench will come in during the 2nd quarter and things will get sloppy, stuff will get out of hand and Kobe will check in a few minutes later. And all of a sudden the turnovers disappear, the help defense gets better, the ball movement actually occurs, and the players seem to be able to channel their energy into the proper outlets, which again wasn’t happening before Kobe came in. This is one of the main reasons Kobe was the MVP of the Finals, because every time he stepped onto the court the team played better. Exceptions abound, obviously, but that’s going to happen. It’s enough to say, though, that Kobe has some sort of palpable aura that secretes focus and determination.

3rd – Pau Gasol played a hell of a Finals and was definitely the second-best player in the Series, better than any Celtics player by far. It was my wish that when Kobe got the Finals MVP he would somehow magically stop thinking about himself and give it to Gasol as a way of saying “Hey man, you fucking rock.” He must have heard me because when he did get it he compromised and said “Man, I love that Spaniard, I just love him, he’s so good for us.” Or something like that. In any case, Pau was incredible and that’s that.

4th – Ron Artest is whack.

5th – The Celtics looked old. Very old. It was no coincidence, I think, that the Lakers went on their important run in the final six minutes of the game because for the first six minutes of the 4th the Celtics basically played like poop and it seemed to be fatigue more than anything. But look at how old their players are: Kevin Garnett (34), Ray Allen (34 – 35 in July), Paul Pierce (32), Rasheed Wallace (37), and Finley (37) was so old he couldn’t get off the bench for more than ten or twelve minutes total the whole series. If he doesn’t retire someone should shoot him Old-Yeller-style. If the team stays together and re-energizes, they can definitely make the second or third round next year, but the championship window is officially closed, I think.

6th – I’m pissed Perkins got injured. Being on the bench helped and hurt Boston: he helped them because he’s been basically ineffective this series, and that’s not an exaggeration; he hurt them because his whole purpose in this series has been as a rest-giver to the other big men. You’d rather have Perkins play 20 mins a game rather than give those 20 mins to Glen Davis (who is inevitably worse after 20 minutes in a game), Garnett (old), and Sheed (old). Also, being out means that Celtics fans can continue to say “That starting five never lost a playoff series,” something Doc Rivers kept emphasizing. It was his way of complaining about the injury without actually complaining about it. Annoying. He forgot to complain about Father Time.

7th – Ron Artest is whack.

8th – This Lakers team could win, like, the next two or three championships, especially if Kobe gets surgery and Artest continues improving inside the triangle. I mean, they won with an anti-triangle guy playing 40 minutes a night. That’s crazy. That’s never happened before with the triangle, having a guy play HUGE minutes who doesn’t understand it and can’t play inside of it. And they still won.

9th – I’m done posting basketball stuff. I’m sure that makes someone happy. Notice how I said “quick” thoughts and then wrote 1300 words? I vomit sentences. I can’t help it. There’s just so much to say. Here, have fun with this:

I’m ruining my life. This might seem self-explanatory – and it is, because naturally we’re all ruining our own lives in pretty much the same couple of ways: (1) we don’t eat the right stuff; (2) we put bad shit into our bodies; (3) we’re not nice enough to random strangers and friends and family. These are the typical ways in which we’re ruining our own lives. But I have something else in mind that is single-handedly making my life miserable. It’s stupid and it’s about art and I don’t expect anyone else to understand or care.

Art in many ways is a reflection of the social consciousness. This is good for several reasons, among them two important ones: first, art that reflects or in some way creates a dialogue with/against the social consciousness is relevant and thus interesting and attractive to living people (which is itself good because (a) it’s always good when people confront the ideas that underwrite their whole existence and (b) the artist gets paid); second, the social consciousness at any given point in time is probably similar to some other social consciousness at any other given point in time, meaning that art is often relevant to people in the future, which is good because the more things we get to look at to try to make the best possible decision, especially when it comes to trying to figure out how to live (which is, I suppose, the only proper goal of life: to figure out what it means to be alive), the better. Obviously in times of crisis, you either push the button or you don’t. You don’t have a lot of time to stand around and twiddle your thumbs while somebody comes up with yet another way in which this particular conflict can resolve itself amicably. But those cases are emergencies and thus irrelevant to analytical discussion. When living life, you’ve got a fair amount of time to sit back and figure things out.

So if art does all this, what does that say about the social consciousness? Well, it says that one can reasonably estimate what constitutes the social consciousness. Now, this was particularly true, say, fifty years ago, probably even twenty years ago, but that doesn’t seem possible right now. See, fifty years ago there was a guy named Johnny Carson who did this show you may have heard of where celebrities came on and basically just hung out and had a conversation with Johnny and Friends until somebody turned the lights out. And everyone either watched The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or they made an active decision to NOT watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. This is a good example of something that tied everyone together. Everyone knew about Johnny Carson even if not everyone watched him.

It’s sort of like the movie When Harry Met Sally. Even if you haven’t seen it, you know what it’s about and you generally understand someone when they say “Me and this girl, we’re totally like Harry and Sally, it’s the same thing!” You know that this means they secretly love each other but they can’t admit it and/or figure out how to get past the whole “we’re just friends” thing. Or they mean the other interpretation of the Harry-Sally complex, that it’s impossible to be friends with someone of the opposite sex because one of them, often the man, will always be thinking about the sexual possibilities of the relationship, thus poisoning the whole operation from the get-go.

So there were several things that informed the social consciousness and it was reasonable to assume that just about everyone knew certain things and felt certain ways about certain stuff and that even given outliers on the fringes of this social spectrum, the middle could be predicted with accuracy. Fast forward to 1995: this was still the case though perhaps not to the same extent. You might not be able to predict the middle of the spectrum with as much accuracy as you could have fifteen years previously but you could still get a reasonable picture of what it was like to be alive in America in 1995.

Now fast forward to 2010: not possible. It really just isn’t. I mean, no one gets their news from the same three or four major papers or even three or four major television networks. Hell, no one really pays attention to the news at all. Or rather, a certain part of society pays attention to the news and another part doesn’t. Several parts don’t, actually. And no one listens to the same music, either. Everyone’s always going on about some band you’ve never heard of because while you’ve been off listening to Lily Allen and Avril Lavigne, they’ve been paying attention to the Dixie Chicks and Les Cowboys Fringants. So what do you have to talk about? How can you relate to this person?

I don’t want to say that the social consciousness has become fragmented because that implies some agent that caused the fragmentation, and I don’t think fragmentation of any sort has actually occurred. What seems to be the case is that the United States is becoming a lot like Europe. Here’s Europe in a nutshell socially/culturally: every country has its own way of living, own way of viewing the world, but because of advances in communication technology, people in Germany love Lily Allen as much as people in France, which is weird because she’s from Britain. But there are sects of people all over Europe that love an artist like Lily Allen and then there are sects of people all over Europe who don’t give a shit and maybe haven’t even heard of her. Communication has allowed more people to hear about more stuff, but not all at the same time. So while Lily Allen dominated the radio in Germany a few years ago, she was only mildly popular in the US and more popular in Britain. AND SHE SINGS IN ENGLISH. SHE’S AN ANGLOPHONIC MUSICIAN.

For the same reason, I’ve discovered the most popular band in Quebec (and maybe Canada): Les Cowboys Fringants. They’re stellar, they sing completely in French, and no one else in my general vicinity has ever heard of them, with the exception of several fellow French students at ASU who were exposed to them for the same reason I was: one of our professors adores them. But none of my friends and no one else I’m likely to run into has ever heard of them. This used to be the case occasionally. You’d hear about something rad and unique and then all your friends would hear about it too because anything rad and unique must be worth checking out. But now this sort of radness and uniqueness doesn’t mean shit. I can just go online and do whatever the hell I want, listen to whatever I want, read what I want, play what I want, and no one else has to care at all about any of it because they can go do the same thing (which means they go and do different things I’ve never heard of).

So whereas it was reasonable to assume that everyone knew and at least acknowledge the greatness of Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, it’s now not even a given. I have a friend who has heard maybe twenty Beatles songs and only because he’s been alive for 28 years and so it’s kind of hard not to have heard their music. But he doesn’t particularly care for them and he doesn’t really even bother to listen to them if even just for the fact that he needs to know them in order to be a human being living in the United States. Same with Led Zeppelin. He knows a few songs but that’s the extent of his involvement. All the music he listens to? Weird shit I can’t pronounce or even remember. This is a guy who used to go to music stores and buy new CD’s just because no one else was buying them. When Modest Mouse released that one CD with that song about being alright he said to me “I hated that band before they were popular.” And he was right: he’d been listening to their first several CD’s before they were even close to mainstream. And the same goes for several other bands. This is a guy who doesn’t feel the need to be a part of the social consciousness and because the year is 2010 he doesn’t have to. If this were 1975, he would know all his own weird music as well as all the popular, contemporary stuff because he couldn’t be a contributing member of his own friend group without knowing the stuff they cared about. Now, though, he’s into one thing, I’m into another, another friend is into God knows what, and we’re all still somehow good friends who hang out and talk and share feelings and stuff.

But what makes our friendship different than what it surely would have been thirty years ago is that we don’t all share even 20% of the same interests. Two of us share a love of basketball and the third one actively made himself love basketball only so that he could be involved with something the other two of us talked about constantly. He understood that without that shared love things would be hard and weird. So that’s one thing we share. We all like to play Magic: The Gathering. That’s two. We all like movies. That’s – no, wait, can’t count that as a third thing because one of us is into terrible but enjoyable stuff like Dead Snow and all the Freddy and Jason movies; one of us loves everything by David Fincher and most things involving blood and/or death; and one of us has an unhealthy obsession with Hugh Grant and Audrey Hepburn movies (le dernier, c’est moi).

So when I go to talk about Audrey Hepburn, Keith and Brian role their eyes. When Keith starts talking about how Freddy got killed in the third movie, Brian and I throw up. And when Brian goes on about Fight Club, Keith and I start watching TV. How is that at all what it used to be?

The social consciousness isn’t fragmented, then, so much as it’s just localizing and becoming regional and diasporic. If I was French and grew up in Paris and then took a trip to Berlin, I might know German and I might know a few things about German culture and some of their music and art, but that would be the extent of it. At the end of the day I would still be a French guy in Germany as a tourist.

Now let’s say I’m an American citizen, white guy, who grew up in Scottsdale and went to Saguaro High School and hung out with all the kids who played in rock bands and smoked a lot of pot and I decided I wanted to go hang out with the other group of kids who played in rock bands and smoked a lot of pot. You’d be surprised how little each group has in common. One group has a hardon for Nirvana, the Stooges, and Led Zeppelin. The other one is making out with girlfriends while listening to Reel Big Fish and Blink 182. These two groups have literally no crossover with the exception of maybe the Beatles but even then the two will fight about which album they like more and which era they like more, with the Nirvana crowd inevitably throwing their weight behind early, raucous, “Twist and Shout” Beatles and the Blink 182 crowd championing the middle Beatles with their ironic hilarity and their sense of optimism and their carefree attitude. And some guy who happened to overhear their conversation starts going on about the late Beatles, who were all about smoking pot, being sad and happy at the same time, and fighting the Man. The only common ground is that they all know the Beatles, but really they know three different bands who all happen to have the same name, which means they share nothing but a love of weed.

Or let’s say you’re this same guy, you’re 21ish, and you’re at a party at your brother’s house. You know a lot about music and your brother’s friends are all music majors at ASU and so you assume some sort of level playing field, some common ground, a place in which you guys can all freely mingle and relate and have a good time. However, after thirty minutes you realize this was just a dream. They all know and relate to totally different operas than you, totally different contemporary bands, no one has any common ground, and so instead of talking about shared experience your brother’s friends start talking about their own shared experience, which is what it’s like to be a music major at ASU circa 2009/2010. Which naturally leaves you on the outside looking in, or rather, leaves you going to the fridge for more beer more often than everyone else.

What does all this have to do with art? Everything, actually. Because if art is more often than not an attempt to start a dialogue with or against the social consciousness or some aspect of it and the positives of doing so are about how people respond to it, then it becomes difficult to create art that’s meaningful for more than two or three people. Example: you write a book and it gets published but (a) only sixteen people read anymore in this country and (b) nine of them have absolutely no shared experience with you in terms of the social consciousness. You both know that American Idol exists and that you both voted for Barack Obama. That’s it. So they don’t read your book, or if they do they don’t care for it because it doesn’t speak to them. And even if you grant that art is about the individual, at some point you have to admit that art is also about how other people respond to it. Because art may be nominally about the artist expressing him- or herself but in the end it’s really about the artist reaching out to other people. Art is a communication medium. Art is about speaking to someone else in a way that you can’t otherwise do because whatever medium you normally use just isn’t working. But if nine out of the sixteen people who might read your book are not going to care or relate at all, then you’re failing in the communication department, which means that you feel like shit and that you’re not being fulfilled as an artist or even just as a human.

I could write a book and my mom would read it because she’s my mom, but she probably wouldn’t care for it all that much. My brother would read it for the same reason and he would feel the same as our mom. A few of my friends would read it because they’re my friends, and a few of my friends wouldn’t read it but they’d know I’d understand. Maybe one of my friends would really identify with it and would relate and the book would speak to them in some meaningful way, but that’s probably it. So if I can expect only one of my friends to respond to my art in a meaningful way because only one of my friends will share enough of my social consciousness to care, then what the hell am I doing? I mean, shit, no wonder country music and Twilight vampires are so popular: the words and the themes and the meanings are very clear and very simple and thus are relevant to a wide swath of the population, unlike, say, the collected short stories of David Foster Wallace which are only meaningful to nine out of sixteen people.

A final and, I think, radically important example: this blog post. I don’t know anyone who’s actually going to read this and care about the fact that art is really hard to make (both in a meaningful way and in a “what’s the point?” way). In fact, while proofreading it, Keith walked up to me, saw what I was doing, and said in all seriousness “What’s that about? I’m not going to read it.” How’s that for tragedy, Shakespeare? Keith will look at the pictures, though, because hey why not?

And how am I ruining my life? Because I’m spending all my time thinking about how to make my art speak to the greatest number of people rather than, you know, creating art. Of course, maybe these sorts of blog posts are themselves art. And if that’s the case, that creates a whole other layer of manure ripe for analysis. But I can’t think about that at the moment, I’ve got other things to run off and take care of. The Lakers are playing Game 7 tonight, remember?

Now, it should be noted that the Dbacks are a great homerun hitting team. They’re one or two in hit homeruns every week, and they score runs better than just about anybody (if all we’re talking here is volume, per-game averages and the like). But hitting homeruns won’t win more than one out of every three ballgames, though it will certainly allow for bottom-of-the-9th heroics like what Chris Young did against the St. Louis Cardinals the other day, saving the team and certainly the once again shitty relief pitching.

Here’s why, though, the LA Lakers are a lot like the Arizona Dbacks: the Lakers like to come out swinging for the fences in the first quarter of every game they’ve played the last two and a half years. Trust me, I’ve watched every single playoff game during that stretch, as well as somewhere around 60-70 of the regular season games each season, and the ones I don’t watch I follow through other mediums and analyze retroactively. So they try to hit a homerun at the beginning of every game. They think that if they hit a homerun right away, they’ll put the opposing team on the ropes and that’s that. Their problem is just like the Dbacks: hitting homeruns will win you a lot of games, and if you’re the Lakers, you hit homeruns better than any team that’s ever lived, in any sport (they’re something like 10-15 times better at it than the Dbacks, if that comparison is at all feasable); but on nights when you fly out or miss the wall, you get behind, and then you start clawing for desperation homeruns to try to get back in the game, and all of a sudden the lead is huge, no amount of homeruns will save you, your defense is shoddy because you’re putting all your effort into swinging for the fences on every pitch, trying to hit threes one very possession. And then you lose, game over, goodbye.

And that’s the Lakers. The frustrating thing is that the Lakers can play small ball (uh, baseball small ball, though they can play basketball small ball, but that’s a different thing altogether). We don’t have even have to look at a large sample of data. The Finals thus far will do. Game 1: the Lakers come out swinging and they land several body blows, hit several homeruns, and they race away to a 13 point win which was never really that close. Game 2: they don’t hit a homerun right away and end up neck and neck with the Celtics who then pull away towards the end and the Lakers try for the last-ditch homerun and it’s get caught for the final out, game over. Game 3: the Lakers hit a homerun in the first half but then, as usual, they let up in the third, the lead is squandered, and yet they manage to pull out a win thanks to Derek Fisher’s Kobe Bryant impersonation. Game 4: homerun fails, they never get back into it. Game 5: homerun fails, they never get back into it.

Now they’re down 3-2 and heading back home, so what happened in Game 6? They came out juiced and ready and started the game off right by settling for singles and doubles (to keep this awkward but fun baseball metaphor alive) and it’s in the second quarter they go for the jugular, swinging fast and hard, homerun after homerun, and all of a sudden it’s a 20 point lead which balloons to 27 and 28 before the benches clear and Boston goes on a mini-and-very-pointless run to closeout the game only trailing by 12, having managed, however, to score less than 70 points (in a Finals game!).

So Game 6 is a good strategy for the Lakers. Start off with singles and doubles because you’re capable of doing that all night long, but since you have to let the dogs out at some point (if only because with Farmar, Vujacic, Gasol, and Brown, well, baby they were born to run), unleash the hounds in the 2nd quarter once you’re in your groove. Homeruns commence, lead balloons to something insurmountable, coast to a victory.

The problem, though, is whether or not the Lakers will come out with the same urgency in Game 7. After trouncing your opponent this badly in GAME SIX OF THE NBA FINALS, it might be difficult to take them as seriously in the next game, especially if Perkins doesn’t play or plays sparingly and feebly.

Thus do I now submit my fear for Thursday’s finalizing Game 7: the Lakers will attempt a homerun, turning away from everything that went right in Game 6. I have no idea whether or not they’ll win because sometimes you just don’t know if that ball is gonna make it over the fence. If it does, sweet sweet apple pie. If not, I’ll spend the next several hours watching Hugh Grant movies and wondering why the Lakers turned their backs on the successful baseball small ball.

Well, nothing Notting Hill can’t fix . . .

I’ve tried watching soccer, I really have. I understand the thrill of the sport, I understand why it’s enjoyable to watch and what gets people juiced about the whole thing. I also understand – after watching it for a while – why soccer enthusiasts get off on the sport and why regular pub-crawling hooligans get off on the sport, and there are very different reasons.

The Soccer Enthusiast enjoys the constant battle for position, the jockeying of player against player, ball movement, trying to find openings in the defense to make a run at the goal. This is the meat of the sport, because goals don’t happen very often, and so the constant striving to get into a position to actually make an attempt at scoring a goal is really what gets the Soccer Enthusiast going. And I can see why. It’s really interesting to watch the teams figure it out and experiment and try stuff and watch individual players try to school their man in an attempt to get by and maybe initiate some sort of stellar offense. It’s interesting in the same way basketball or tennis is interesting. It’s not the same and I don’t think it’s as good, but it’s similar. I get it. I understand.

Now, the pub-crawling hooligan is watching soccer for a different reason. This person is all about excitement, atmosphere, hanging out with friends and drinking the whole time, and there’s nothing particularly bad about all this, cause hey, that’s fucking fun, people. The problem is that I have a feeling that the people who gather at bars/pubs/etc. to watch soccer aren’t actually paying much attention to the mechanics of the game (especially since pub/bar/etc. tv’s are often small and therefore it’s hard to do that) but are simply hanging out, drinking beer, maybe chatting up a lady or two, and then HOLY SHIT GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL. And that’s not that cool, ya know?

I mean, you watch basketball like you take a piss: it’s sort of a constant thing. But you can watch soccer at a bar the same way you can take a shit: it doesn’t all come out at once.

So I get why both types of people watch/enjoy soccer, and I enjoy it, too, to some extent, but there are some impenetrable walls that separate ME from CONSTANT SOCCER BLISS. These walls consist of: (1) I like a little more action in a sport; (2) I like the idea of winning and losing on a regular basis.

For (1) I should say that there is action in soccer, but the action isn’t leading directly to winning, but rather leads indirectly to winning, because 75% of what goes on in soccer, as far as I can tell, involves getting into a position where you can take a shot at the goal. Another 20% is made up of taking those shots, and the other 5% is actually scoring a goal. Well, for me, I’d prefer a lot more emphasis on the last two, not an overwhelming amount, but I’d definitely like more. Here’s why: in a sport, I enjoy the constant back-and-forth of “Holy shit who’s going to win this thing?” which you get in something like basketball, baseball, hockey, tennis, and football, because both sides are scoring at a pace that allows you to feel legitimately excited about being ahead and then being behind and then being ahead again. But in soccer, you’re rarely ahead, you’re rarely behind, you’re often just tied, whether 0-0, 1-1, 2-2, whatever. So the thrill of movement, of being ahead one minute and then behind the next, constantly stabbing away, worrying about winning and losing, movement movement movement – well, none of that is there for very long.

For (2) my main concern is that too many soccer matches end in draws, which doesn’t give you any sort of fulfillment, and what’s the point of sports if you can’t get fulfillment? Sports are necessarily concerned with a few things: (a) enjoying the actual execution of the sport, and (b) winning. The bad part, obviously, is (c) losing. But in soccer, you often get (a) without (b) or (c) and that seems to miss the point. Games are battles in a larger war and that’s one of the big draws of sports, one of the reasons it’s so damn enjoyable and fascinating: it’s human war without killing and stuff. So if you’re not winning or losing then what exactly are you doing?

It’s this last part that really bothers me. The main fulfillment of sport is that it’s a contest. And if it stops being a contest, then it has simply become some recreational activity that’s mildly fun for a certain group of people, like ballroom dancing or frisbee in the park.

And for me, this is not good. And it’s not good for soccer, either, because if you’re sport isn’t beautiful (tennis) or graceful and exhilarating (basketball), while still incorporating the basic ideals of sport (winning and losing), then it’s not going to sustain my interest for very long.

And those horns? Yeah, we need to get rid of those. They make me watch soccer on mute, which can’t be a good thing.

Word.

Stupid Lakers. Sigh.

Go to youtube and type in her name and you’ll come across a virtual cornucopia of deliciously awful yet sincere music videos that someone had the genius to upload to Youtube some time ago from the original VHS formatting, giving the world the greatest Terrible Music Videos ever.

Jan Terri is just some woman from Chicago who wanted to be a singer. She did backup vocals for some people and then started driving limos for money. And then she began writing songs and filming music videos to accompany them, which she then handed out to limo passengers in an attempt to jumpstart her burgeoning career. All that happened, though, was that some prescient folks held on to the VHS tapes and let them loose in the YouTube Epoch, giving me and millions of others around the globe the opportunity to sit and laugh for hours and hours as you watch Jan Terri do horrible things with a video camera and a creative license. If not for “Get Down Goblins” and “Losing You” I might have actually done something meaningful today (other than watch my beloved Lakers give away Game 2 of the NBA Finals, but that’s another story, and one more deserving of tears and alcohol abuse).

So what can we learn from Jan Terri? Well, she said “Ya know, I’m gonna do music, and that’s that.” Several weeks later after writing some songs and creating accompanying music videos she said “Suck it, Trebek.” She didn’t get anything out of it other than a cult following that amounted to a bunch of people like me knowing her work but not her. None of us actually want to support her or help her music career but we sure hope she keeps at it (in the intervening years there seems to have been a dramatic fall-off in production) because what else am I going to do on a Lazy Sunday after waking up at noon from a wild and crazy night at a friend’s house when I’ve got five hours to kill before tip-off?

Youtube, obvs.

And this is what’s become pandemic for my generation: we just sit around and look at shit on Youtube. Worse, we post the cream of the crop on Facebook so our friends can enjoy the fun. We’ve become triage doctors for our friends who don’t have or won’t spend the time sifting through videos until finding a winner. And even then, others have already done the REAL triage, because it’s very easy to spend an hour on Youtube and never come across a shitty video. In the course of things you’ll find some real gems (“100 Funny Falls,” for instance, or “Fucking Awesome” – I recommend this one highly) and those you’ll put on Facebook, but the rest are still funny enough that you don’t actually feel all that bad about spending an inordinate amount of time laughing at stupid shit when you could be, oh, I don’t know, reading, writing, doingsomethingmeaningfulwithyourlife.

I feel like there’s a problem here, and maybe that’s just because I’m supposed to think there’s something wrong with spending time watching online videos rather than cleaning the catbox or finishing Gaddis’ The Recognitions (I’m around page 450 btw; it terminates somewhere in the early 1000′s . . .). Maybe that’s the old man in me decrying all those smelly children to get the hell off my lawn, except it’s the social/cultural equivalent: “Hey you, stop wasting time staring at that colored screen. You’ll ruin your eyes. Now go out and find a girl and get married ’cause I want some grandchildren.”

Of course, there’s another way of looking at it. There are several levels of triage going on. First, the Internet Community, that vast section of society us cool kids refer to as Anon (if you’re not totally hip, google “Anon” and you’ll figure it out), judges videos such that over time all an individual Anon has to do is go on Youtube and type in things like “funniest video ever” or “make me laugh” or “wordswordswords” and something hilarious will always be waiting at the end of the search. And then this individual Anon does further triage by selecting the funniest ones and putting them on Facebook (or Twitter or WordPress or whatever) and then all that Anon’s acquaintances view it. What we have now is shared experience among this small group of people. And they have a similar shared experience with the larger internet as a whole because a good 50% (made that up) of the videos they know and love will appear in the collections of other groups. And so what a place like Youtube and an activity like video surfing does is bring together people in a time when isolation is so easy and natural.

Example: Today it’s really fucking hard to have a lot of shared experience with other people like the way it was in the 60′s and 70′s when everyone, for instance, watched Johnny Carson or made the decision to NOT watch Johnny Carson. In either case, everyone knew about Johnny Carson and had something to say about him and his show and his guests. So if everyone is watching Johnny Carson and everyone is reading their local newspaper then everyone has a lot to talk about. And if all the “liberal intellectuals” are reading The New York Times and all the “conservative intellectuals” are reading The Wall Street Journal, then those groups of people have a lot to talk about as well.

Fast forward to the 2000′s: no one reads local and/or national newspapers anymore. The closest we can come to this sort of “shared news” is the 18-35 year-old age group and things like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, which are shows watched by a good number of those 18-35 year-olds, and thus shared experience. But even that doesn’t work all the time. You have to break down that age group into smaller units, like “College Students,” of which a large number watch John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Even then, though, the majority of college students don’t watch every Daily Show, but rather have at the minimum a passing acquaintance with the show. Same thing with South Park. Not everyone has seen every episode, but enough people in the 18-35 age group have seen several episodes such that someone can bring up the one about George Lucas and Steven Spielberg raping Indiana Jones at a party and assume a reasonable amount of success.

But really, this is so small that it doesn’t even matter. I mean, there’s so much good music out there that it’s impossible to listen to it all or even share the same interests musically with another set of people, or even just one other person. Same goes for movies, books, tv shows, and internet sites.

What are all the implications of this? Well, it’s now infinitely harder to relate to other people you meet at, say, a bar or a party. One could assume somewhat reasonably as early as ten or fifteen years ago that if you met some girl at a party, you’d have enough in common from having lived in the same country to strike up a conversation and maybe convince her to go out to lunch. Now, however, you go into a bar or chill out at a party and you find out real quick that the cute girl at the end of the couch with no conversation partner has never seen any South Park episodes, doesn’t know who Daniel Tosh is, doesn’t like Hemingway or Faulkner, doesn’t pay attention to politics, doesn’t dig Miles Davis or Lilly Allen, and is only interested in underground bands from the Northwestern United States and feminist studies, particularly on the subcontinent of India. So, like that one song, where do we go from here? How do I proceed when this girl has no clue about any of this shit that I know about and I have no clue about any of her shit?

Well, you’re fucked, basically. Or rather, I’m fucked. Because how am I or any of my friends going to meet any girls and, you know, begin some sort of meaningful life with another person if we can’t relate to anyone we meet who happens to have a vagina? I don’t know how it was for my mom and dad, but it’s a fucking wasteland out there right now. Just last night I was at a friend’s bbq and the only women there were 5’2″ and Hispanic. And let’s just say that we had absolutely nothing in common, something that didn’t need to be proven by actual conversation between us – especially since conversation was all but impossible. Later on several white girls shows up and I attempted to make some inroads with them but I got nowhere. So where does a guy go to meet girls? This question seems to have haunted men since the dawn of time, but with the isolation of individuals and their respective clusters, it only seems to be getting worse. And it doesn’t help that every girl you meet at school already has a douchebag boyfriend (alright, so they’re most likely not all douchebags, but it’s easier to get through the day if I conjure a mental image of one of those guys on Jersey Shore every time a girl not-so-subtly slips into conversation that “Me and my boyfriend were at the mall the other day . . .”).

I’d like to point out that the impetus for this post was Jan Terri, perseverance, and Lazy Sundays, and I’ve now completed a rough thesis on the isolating effect of the proliferation of technology and talent in America and how this makes it really hard for me to meet new chicks. Fuckin’ bloooooooows, ya know?

Shit, just watch this.

I digress, constantly, but no one gives
a response to me. Honestly, though, my
despondency is not dependent on
constantly hearing you respond to me.

My despondency, though, it belongs to
me, I think it goes right along with me.
If my mood was bright
it wouldn’t be right
so why should I fight
the sad and the sorrow
and always think
about tomorrow
when I could just
turn out the light?

In the dark I think and sit
all about the world that’s lit
by chaos, pain, fire, and shit;
in the end should we just quit?

I think deep down
there’s good somewhere,
in someone’s prayer;
in polluted air
someone must care.
But would they dare?
Or are they scared?
That it’s not fair?
That they might stare?
And laugh at them
because they care?

If that same fear is held by all,
who do we call to change it all?