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All responses Most smiled responses
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Since this question was asked in 2009 I am, of course, tempted to answer it by listing events that already happened in 2010. Then I will hit 'Post' while giggling to myself, drape my white, faux-fur cape around my broad and bare shoulders, and lay in front of my fireplace while sipping green tea out of a cup I made during my 'ceramic crafts period'. Maybe watch something on Instant Netflix. They put up pretty much every Cassavettes movie a couple of weeks ago. Maybe just curl up with a book or prick my muscular chest with a pin and drip some of my blood into a cup and then offer it to Dionysus in exchange for blessing the leather goods that I own.
That seems to obvious to me right now though. Instead I'll offer my predictions for the next four months, followed by the next three years:
2010: Things have been getting real. Things will probably continue to get real.
2011: Things start to get a little unreal. Due partially to the marketing push of 3-D movies and TV people start to get 3-D sickness or 'The Red and Blues', and start to notice the overall flatness of 'real' life. Anti-Depressants are prescribed, but that doesn't stop a significant portion of the population from taking mirrors off of their walls to look behind them, attempting to climb into their flat screen TVs, spending hours using make-up to draw pores on themselves to give the appearance that they are in HD or accosting short people for not 'being in IMAX'.
2012: Even though the New York Times and CNN.com post a bunch articles about Mayan prophecies, and those articles are widely linked by all your friends on TLK.NG (a sort of advanced version of twitter), the world doesn't end which makes everything seem pretty 'real.'
2013: A large page is turned. The unreal/real binary collapses as you and your dog do vocal harmonizations on a white sailboat. A tear falls from god's eye. -
asked by sloaneshutup
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The first thing I thought of while trying to figure out a good representational pinata for myself was a huge one in the shape of Peter Gabriel's head. I think this is because of that scene in the SLEDGEHAMMER video where his clay fists turn into clay sledgehammers and he bangs on his clay head in stop-motion. After figuring that out, I pictured a bunch of kids at a party giggling, yelling, and hitting a giant Gabriel head with sticks. After a while a little blood is pouring through the paper mache. The children, in their cloud of violent candy lust, don't notice. They keep smacking the pinata. Finally the bottom of it, just near the second chin, cracks open. A naked and injured Peter Gabriel falls out of the Peter Gabriel pinata head onto the ground.
He is unconscious. The police are called. The EMT says he believes Gabriel is in a coma. An inspector asks a lot of questions to confused children. At one point, one of the kids' parents asks him not to smoke near her son. He apologizes and says that the life a cop is one that is lived for the children of the world in a broader sense, so it doesn't necessarily train you to deal with them on an individual basis. She says she understands and fails to notice that he doesn't actually put out his cigarette. Most of the children draw a lot of crude pictures of Gabriel falling out of his own head for months afterwards. Some of these end up on the internet.
Gabriel remains in a coma. The 24 hour news networks attempt to construct exactly how this situation could've occurred. His past in Genesis is brought up. Was this some sort of performance art piece gone awry? His sexual history is discussed. Was it some weird fetish? The fact that he was inside a pinata is tied to the bootleg pinata trade and that industry's ties to illegal immigration. Gabriel was a known liberal.
Phil Collins does a series of interviews where he looks increasingly annoyed. He eventually denies reporters access. Towards the end of Gabriel's first few weeks in a coma, grainy video footage surfaces on Youtube of what could be Collins constructing a paper mache replica of his own head in his backyard. Some people in the comments underneath the video mention that his pinata head is much more professional looking than Gabriel's, though it 'lacks the artistry'. Most people in the comments say the video is fake or just write 'fag!'
CNN broadcasts the Collins video leading to a few blog posts by college graduates concerning how CNN 'isn't what it used to be' and how it now 'caters to a certain demographic' and, more generally, the overall 'decline of journalism.'
By the fourth week of Gabriel's coma, no one is really talking about it anymore. Every once in a while someone you barely know on Facebook will post a link to a 'Shock the Monkey' or 'In Your Eyes' .mp3 and write something like 'Was such a talented guy' (except horribly misspelled).
Gabriel awakes. He doesn't remember what happened. When the story is related to him he is confused and thinks it's 'weird, man.' After his release from the hospital he begins to feel strange. He is consumed for the rest of his life with the thought that the world around him exists only in his own head. He records albums about it with songs that are drenched consecutively in more and more reverb. The first album has some novelty success but the next six don't sell. The last record I AM THE CANDY IN MYSELF, is almost unlistenable due to the amount of reverb on the songs. By this time Gabriel is wearing tiny microphones with reverb effects and small speakers all over his body. His every movement and breath echoes seemingly endlessly. He frowns and the sound bounces around the room and haunts it for days.
The second thing I thought of while trying to figure out a good representational pinata for myself was a pinata that is a fairly exact replica of my physical self. While this may not be the best metaphorical representation, physically and, in some ways, emotionally it should work.
Up until a few weeks ago, I would've have said that the candy Pinata Pete should be filled with would be cigarettes, but now that I've quit smoking I'd have to say I'd be filled with small, cheaply made, porcelain dioramas of me knife-fighting a giant spider that has my father's face. -
What's formspring?
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I think this question was asked just after I created my formspring account, and I sort of regret not answering it then, as Hegel has since died and the 24 hour news cycle has moved on to other things.
I did, however, attempt to answer it a few weeks ago, by relating an insulting story about Roger Ebert. While I was typing that timely and grand take-down of a guy that's been made fun of in the media for at least 25 years, I happened to click over to my twitter window and saw a link to a blog post Ebert made.
'What synchronicity!', I exclaimed, and began singing 'King of Pain' and doing my best 'serious Sting face'. I attempt to accomplish this by imagining myself standing on a stage with two other guys. Nice guys, talented, but nowhere near as talented as I am. I have a song to sing, a castle to buy, money to make, first edition romantic poetry manuscripts to put in a vault, and these two guys are creeping up behind me. Closer and closer as the spotlight begins to shrink down. Just outside that thin gold circle is a darkness. A darkness containing no hand-written Wordsworth notes, or drawbridges, or Grammies. And it's two men attempting to squeeze into the light with me. Out of the darkness, into the light, two guys, friends, sort of, that I can't necessarily meet in open conflict. Luckily, while my lyrics are mostly, at this point, based on working class characters, and typical pop music plots, I secretly have not only an educated background, but am extremely well-studied in both the history of music and literature. I named Roxanne after the character from CYRANO DE BERGERAC, motherfuckers. I study Tantra. I study society. I am attractive. I am well liked by both high and low culture. And while I need those two guys right now, for conflict, to push me, for support, I am sure of myself. I am going to sing 'King of Pain' and just keep this all inside, until it turns to guilt and I have to spend the next 30 years attempting to save the rain forest.
Though, admittedly, it's not a very good Sting impersonation.
I clicked on the Ebert link and found an incredibly depressing essay about how he hasn't been able to eat or drink anything for years, and he used to love life, and he's trying to again, and it was uplifting in a sad way like watching those commercials where kids actually like their grandparents.
So I'm not going to talk shit about Roger Ebert. He's actually a good blogger. Most of the time, I feel the best blogs are written by either people that know a lot about one niche thing, or people that had a very specific life experience that they can relate. Ebert is a guy that has watched a billion movies, and became famous for talking about them. That's pretty specific. What Ebert is not good at though, is being a film critic.
I know a lot of people realize this. It's pretty well demonstrated in an interview he did with Bill Clinton while he was president. It's on youtube. It's uncomfortable to watch. Ebert is embarrassed, and nervous and attempting to sort of kiss Clinton's ass. He brings up the fact that AMERICAN BEAUTY and FIGHT CLUB are terrible, nihilistic films, in order to sort of play to what he (for some reason) assumes would be the American president's conservative views on pop culture. He assumes Clinton hasn't seen these movies. He has. He also understands them in a way a film professor might. He likes them. He disagrees with Ebert. He explains what type of society, historically would make films that deconstruct middle-class, suburban living. It is soon revealed that he's actually seen every movie ever made, and remembers them better, and understands them more critically than the movie critic he's talking to.
One could argue that Ebert is a 'man of the people' and part of his popularity is due to the fact that he understands film as much as some random guy that wants to watch Mel Gibson punch people. He may come at his reviews 'Larry King-style' and not do any research because he wants to just get down what a 'normal person' would experience while watching a film. He may be the Jay-Z of critics. That's cool. That's not the character that Ebert has attempted to build through his career though. He seemed to want to be the movie scholar, the original pop culture nerd, if he had heard of the French new-wave critics, I'm sure he wanted to be like them.
But as he's gotten older, and weirder (as people do), and only has his reviews posted on his blog rather than in a newspaper or on tv, he's actually gotten more interesting. It's become obvious that everything he's written has been incredibly subjective, and from a personal place. He likes the GARFIELD movie because he wants the other guy that hated it to go fuck himself, he hates GRINDHOUSE because Tarantino is just trying to be the cool version of Ebert, he likes THE DARK KNIGHT because of an origin story for The Joker he completely made up while writing the review and put into his memories of the film retroactively.
He's become a blogger.
A couple of summers ago, I went to the movies with my girlfriend, my brother and my sister. I forget what we originally went to see, but we followed it by sneaking into see THE HAPPENING. None of us had any idea what it was about besides the fact that it was the new M Night Shyamalan movie. If you've seen it, you understand that it is shockingly bad. I watched it for an hour, sort of confused, wondering if I was missing something. Marky Mark was running away from wind. I looked over at the three people I was with and just saw equally confused looks on their faces. It was the first time while watching a movie that I actually started to seriously consider the idea that I was dreaming and none of this was happening. After the part where the characters watch a tiger eat a guy's arms off on their iPhone, I started to wonder if it was a black comedy. After the part where the guy runs himself over with a lawnmower, I honestly waited for the Shyamalan twist ending to be that the entire movie was a joke.
By the time it ended, I was sort of fascinated by it. Why was it so bad? Did anyone see it before they distributed it? Where did the money to make it come from? Are other people as shocked as I am? So I went home and looked it up online. Most people were equally shocked. Roger Ebert loved it.
He reasoned that since the movie is about the apocalypse, it should be taken seriously, because for the past few years he's had a very strong feeling that the world is ending. Ebert declared the apocalypse on his movie blog and no one really cared. Of course, Ebert has been really sick for the past few years and can no longer eat, or talk, or walk, and he'd have to be having feelings of mortality. But he didn't say he was having strong feelings that he may die soon, he said he was sure that the world was ending.
Shit's subjective, Hegel. -
Sure. I don't like my music and I still hang out with myself most of the time. Do you really want a relationship based on dishonesty? Wouldn't Dr. Phil tell us that's a waste of our limited time in this life that I like to call 'the thunderdome'.
I mean, one minute you're lying to a person about how much you like their low-fi music that they work really hard on and give to the world completely for free, and the next Tina Turner is forcing you into a fight to the death with Master Blaster. A fight that you will lose without possession of a dog whistle. And the dog whistle, my friend, is honesty. Tina Turner, on the other hand, in this metaphor actually represents Tina Turner.
And, if I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about our relationship. If you're someone I hang out with in real life, there's a 75% chance I don't really like you that much anyway. -
I haven't been answering formspring questions mostly because I've come down with what I'm calling 'writer's block' but what is actually a seasonal, intense hatred of every thought I have in my head. I get some pretty good questions though, and some really bad ones, and while I don't feel like coming up with an answer for this, I'll just say this is by far the best question I've been asked yet.
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You know when right-wing politicians, when they're not talking about 911, like to suggest that the New York area isn't part of 'real America'? They have a point. I've never met or have seen a juggalo in the wild.
A couple of years ago I had to actually google 'juggalo' to find out what they were.
One time when I was at a bowling alley there was a couple in the lane next to me wearing all Slipknot ensembles. The girl was wearing a Slipknot t- shirt and sweatpants while the guy was wearing Slipknot cargo pants, and jacket that he took off to reveal a Slipknot sweatshirt. After bowling next to them for an hour or so, I won a soda in a bet that he would have a Slipknot t-shirt on under the sweatshirt.
When I was in college at the end of the 90's there was a large courtyard on campus in front of the main building where all the students hung out. All the different subcultures and cliques grouped together separated by a few feet. It was exactly like that scene in GANGS OF NEW YORK where they introduce the gangs in the five corners. There were the hippies playing hacky sack, the emo kids talking about Promise Ring, the frat dudes yelling, the Jesus kids looking sad and nervous, the anime club talking about girls, the lesbians talking about politics, ect. The most entertaining and weird group were the business majors who, in some sort of bad SNL sketch stereotype, wore ties and carried briefcases and looked incredibly disgruntled. I remember thinking it was really weird that there was a large group of raver kids, as I thought that whole scene died years before. Then I realized that most of them probably weren't from the New York area. Or were time travelers.
Most of the teenagers I see around now dress like Pharrell or Kanye. There are also still a bunch of emo kids. Sometimes I see a group of 15 year old spirit of '77 punks. All of these people seem to buy their clothes at Urban Outfitters.
That Jersey Shore show is real.
I'm friends with guys that never got over being metal heads in high school. I'm friends with people that wear all black and go to goth clubs. I'm friends with people that dress up like robots and go to sex clubs.
Up until a few years ago, I'd still see kids in make-up wearing Marilyn Manson t-shirts at the mall.
In Williamsburg all the young people dress exactly like the internet would lead you to believe.
And while it doesn't really scare me, I've still never seen a juggalo. -
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In the group of friends that I had from about '98-2002, there was this one guy that hung around us who was, for all purposes, an aspiring literary critic. He was in his early twenties, and I think he worked in a grocery store, but he only wore suits, and fedoras, and claimed he was Russian, though I think he meant he was from a Russian neighborhood in New Jersey. He was the type of person that you'd be sitting in a diner with and he'd pull out ALICE IN WONDERLAND (he'd get mad at me for calling it that), and start reading aloud from it.
Behind the unrealistic, stereotypical pretentiousness, he was an all right guy though. Or at least provided me with two pretty decent stories.
We were in a crowded bar one night, and I was stuck next to him. The blaring music, the sweaty teenagers rubbing up against us , and the drunken screaming alerted him to the fact that this was the perfect opportunity to lecture me on deconstructionism.
As I stood and listened to him for over an hour, and had any reply cut off with something like 'But what is this glass really? Is it just it's components?' I started thinking about how these were always the conversations I wished I could've had with people when I was a kid, but he wasn't letting me talk. He was ruining my childhood dreams.
After he finished his speech, I said 'Yeah, dude, I've read books too', and walked away. Though it was only a minor victory, it was one of the first times in my adult life that I can remember successfully dissing someone. I went home got 'talk to the hand' tattooed on my palm and began the process of becoming the Queen Latifah influenced man I am today.
The other story is both more 'Jersey famous' and action packed. A group of us were driving upstate to a holiday party in the snow in a caravan of cars. This guy was in the front as we were driving up a large hill. About 800 yards in front of all of us a tractor trailer jack-knifed on the ice and started very slowly rolling backwards. The car I was in pulled over. This guy opened his car door with the car still running and dove out like Indiana Jones having a panic attack. His car kept going until the person in the passenger seat reached over and stepped on the break. The tractor trailer stopped, straightened out and went on its way. He sat on the ground pretty much uninjured. The laughing began and went on for years.
Not too long after that, he and I ran into each other at a coffee place and I was reading a William Burroughs biography. It had 'Nothing is true; everything is permitted' quoted on the back cover. He began to lecture me on the fact that Burroughs made this quote up himself and falsely attributed it to Rashid ad-Din Sinan, as well as fictionalizing large portions of his stories about the Hashashin sect. As he was telling me this, almost angrily, I started wondering if he was following up on his deconstructionism lesson and now attempting to teach me about irony. Because dude, nothing is true; everything is permitted.
I don't think I saw him again in the years since, possibly because he felt I'd learned enough. And actually after writing this out I realize that he was sort of my Mr. Miyagi, but instead of karate, he taught me how to talk to and deal with people on the internet.
All that said, he may still attempt to sue me for posting this.
(Moral disclaimer: I'm sure this dude turned out fine as he was smart, and well read, and actually pretty funny. He was just annoying to me in the early 2000s. Though probably nowhere as near as annoying as I was to myself. Though, I guess, he could also be dead.) -
I doubt it, but the guy on the left does look a lot like (Bad Seeds) Warren Ellis.
The other night I was watching one of the 300 TV shows about sex vampires that are on now, and a Cave song was playing in the background, and I realized that we're only years away from Nick Cave being celebrated by the mainstream media. There will be a biopic detailing his rise to fame and conquering of his drug addiction, BAD SEED: THE NICK CAVE STORY, possibly starring Shia Labeouf or Tobey Macguire, with a soundtrack featuring covers of his songs by Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, Cat Power and Young Jeezy. Your Mom, your kids and the Motion Picture Academy will be really into it.
Also; how good was his PROPOSITION movie? How good was his statue joke? http://tinyurl.com/y8d9gvc -
I'd say it's most likely the barely literate people that leave comments on comics blogs, mostly, in recent years, deriding everything Grant Morrison has written. Or as I call them 'heroes.' Being uninstructed in the art of reading comprehension compels them to never surrender.
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Apparently the verification process is ongoing between myself, my agent, the formspring verification team, and Trent Reznor. It may take a while, however, as I'm not certain any of those people actually exist. Myself included.
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I don't think anyone ever really feels like they fully accomplished anything except for death. It's the one thing that doesn't give you the opportunity to regret not doing it as well as you should have. So you have that to look forward to.
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It's 2010. And your significant other has been dropping hints that are sort of obvious to everyone except you that you need to loosen up, and experiment a little more. We all know that you can buy a sandwich on every corner, but if you buy the sandwich ingredients, you get more for less money.
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Sometimes when I see pictures of myself that people post on facebook, or someone mentions my hairstyle, I think 'Do I really look like that? As you age do you have a mental image of yourself that remains stuck in a certain time period?' Then I realized that's it's just that I've left my house maybe 4 times in the past 3 years, so I don't really feel the need to look in the mirror that often.
Photos aren't true representations of how other people see you anyway. No one is looking at you with an objective camera eye. Especially with the Internet being the main way people communicate. My mental image of 70% of my friends are their online avatars.
My one suggestion to actually see a representation of your true self, would be to go to every mirror in your house, as naked as you can get, stare into it silently for about 15 minutes, and then smash it with your fist. After you're done walk around observing the the tiny, multiple angle, mirror images of yourself scattered on the floor, covered in the blood from your knuckles and realize this is still your reflection.
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pete’s Bio
Whatever, Frodo.
