The Stormy Present – Society

Taking full advantage of my degree earned over five years I took a job at a bike shop a few months ago. I’m planing on only working here while I work on my MBA, then I’ll upgrade to used car salesman. Trey, Chris, and I spent a large portion of our time in junior high and high school mountain biking. None of us had enough money to buy nice bikes, but we made due. We rode at Southside quite often and had a great time doing it.

The shop that I’m working in now deals mostly with high-end bikes that cost on average $1,500 to $2,000. When I first took the job I figured that maybe one customer would come through daily. I could not imagine that there were a lot of people that were willing to spend that much money on a bicycle. A few weeks after starting my job I was quite surprised to learn that we average $10,000/day in bike sales. This got me feeling good.

If the US economy is so poor, how are people are still able to spend $2,000 on a bicycle? The economy can’t be that bad right? That’s what I thought until yesterday.

Let me backtrack for a moment. Living in Denver puts me 5 hours away from one of, if not the best mountain biking locations in the world. People literally fly from all over the globe to come and ride at Moab, Utah.

So yesterday a young girl, probably around 21-23 came in the shop. She was eying a $500 used road bike that was on the rack outside. She came in and asked to see the bike. As soon as we walked outside and she pointed out the bike it was obvious that the bike was much large for her. After talking for a moment I pointed out how big the bike was in relation to her size. She immediately told me that she didn’t care. She lives in Melbourne, Australia and with the exchange rate and scarcity of bicycles, she would be able to sell the bike for at least double what she paid for it. So in a matter of a minute and a half she purchased a $500 used bicycle.

Then today I’m opening the store at 9:30. About 9:45 two gentlemen with Scottish accents come into the shop. They are on there way from Scotland to Moab and want to buy a bike. After a few minutes of looking, one of the gentlemen settles on a $1600 Trek Fuel Ex 6. While ringing the gentleman up I asked him what kind of bike he rides in Scotland. He said that he rides a similar style bike. I found it odd that this guy would come all the way to Denver to buy the same kind of bike he already has at home. When asking him why he didn’t just bring his bike with him, he told me that he can buy this bike in the US, have it shipped home, sell it, and still make more than double what he paid for the bike and the shipping.

I didn’t think the economy was doing well, but I didn’t know that it was as bad off as it is. Now we all know as soon as we get our $600 check everything will be fine again… thank god for the genius of the Administration. If you’re waiting for a conclusion to this just be patient…

It’s time to stop being nice and start getting real.

I just thought of this, but why is it that MTV thinks being nice and being real are polar opposites? I mean I really am a nice guy in reality. So for me, gettin’ real would also mean being nice and if I were to stop being nice, I would also cease being real. Something to think about MTV executives (who I imagine all wear the blazer over the t-shirt with jeans).

Anyway, the real issue is that the Real World just celebrated its 20^th anniversary. I did not get to watch the 20^th anniversary award show, but I did listen to the Bill Simmons (aka the Sports Guy) do a recap of it on his podcast, which was hilarious. Also, it was the first reality show after all and we were in our teens and 20s as it evolved so I figured it is something that deserves to be talked about, remembered fondly, and ridiculed. So here goes.

Bill Simmons mentioned that the paramount moment of the anniversary show was when the black guy from Seattle, I can’t remember his name, came out with his fiancé, who was a dude. That’s a big moment because he was the guy who during the show was feuding with Irene, the crazy bipolar girl, who had decided to leave the show midway through. Her leaving was supposed to be one of those sappy Real World episodes where all the housemates are bummed to lose a ‘friend’, but instead she got into it with the black guy and ended up calling him ‘gay’. He was incredibly offended and proceeded to throw her stuffed animal into the harbor that the house was situated on. Then, after they fished the stuffed animal out of Puget Sound, he ran up to the car she was leaving in and slapped her in the face. But now the guy who was driven to slap a girl in the face because she called him gay is about to become a married gay man.

I think that turn of events summarizes why the Real World was must see TV. Nothing about the show is real, but it is a bunch of crazy people with serious issues trying to cohabitate. The show follows a sort of timeline where it is funny first and foremost, troubling at times (i.e. the guy slaps Irene in the face), and then somehow makes sense. In other words, there is a crazy person you make fun of, then you feel bad for them or they do something over the line, then their craziness makes sense due to some revealed troubled past or mental disorder or they just turn out to be an asshole in which case your initial hatred and laughing at their expense is vindicated and justified. Funny to troubling to making perfect sense somehow; that is the Real World in a nutshell.

But enough of the analysis, I mean this show might have started out as a social experiment but evolved into voyeurism and senseless debaucher (which is why we loved it). So on that note I submit the following remembrances for you and if you disagree or remember something else post a comment about it (please, any discussion of the Real World is bound to be wrought with hilarity).

For my money the best season was Miami. Dan from that show was, and probably still is, the most agitated gay man in the history of the world. Bill Simmons mentioned that the greatest fight in the Real World history was when Dan and Melissa got in an argument that lasted 3 episodes. I agree and what makes that better, which the Sports Guy forgot to mention, was that it started because Melissa accidentally opened Dan’s mail. You’ve gotta love that. She accidentally opens his mail, he screams at her like she killed his family and calls her a bitch, at which point she reacts to being called a bitch as if there is no greater insult in the English vocabulary, and then proceeds to violently argue for 3 episodes.

Also in that season was the famed threesome with Melissa, the guy from the house, and some random chick he brought home. How can you beat that? They all go in the pool house shower room and start to get it on while Dan and the small girl listened in. Then they tried to sneak the small girl through the window into the shower room to get a look and she broke the window. Great TV all around.

Second best season, I’m gonna say was Hawaii because they had Tek, who was both normal and funny, a rare combo in the Real World, the girl with big boobs who magically combined the worst personality possible with a hot body, and Ruthie who was an alcoholic. That whole season was legendary.

Third I’d give to New Orleans because I liked the black guy who wanted to be a musician or songwriter or whatever but clearly had no talent. Then there was the skater guy who was a total douche. Then there was the kind of hot/innocent/awkward, Mormon girl.

Forth would be the New York one with Coral and the Miz and that one really hot, even by Real World standards, girl who was a singer or something.

Fifth I guess would be Chicago only because I met the hot blonde girl from that season while I was in New Orleans.

Ok, Jeff and Lauren Spears I expect your Real World expertise to come up with anything I’ve missed and any great moments that you think should be mentioned. Suggested topics include your favorite Real World cast, favorite Real World cast member, would you rather be on Road Rules or Real World, is it not sad that the Gauntlet is basically the only source of income for most of these people, and anything else you can think of.

As an art form, satire has existed since Antiquity.  Several Greek playwrights wrote works mocking the conventions of their time.  It has endured throughout western history as a  form of cultural critique.  Today, thanks to television and the internet, there are endless sources of satirical pleasure.  My question is this:  is satire necessary?  Or beyond that, is it even relevant?

The question that must be asked is whether or not satire has an impact.  To what extent does it have the ability to effect change?  Does pointing out the flaws of a particular time and place have any capacity to change that which it examines?  One of the fundamental flaws of satire is that most often the only people who understand its meaning are the ones who already agree with the satire’s criticism.  To the rest it comes across as crude or stupid.   A perfect modern example of this is the show South Park.  South Park is arguably one of the most brilliantly satirical productions in the history of television.  Yet it is frequently criticized and reviled for its content.  To those who don’t understand its message, it is simply a despicable program that’s nothing more than cartoon-ish violence and toilet humor. 

Inasmuch as satire raises valid points about society, it is essentially just preaching to the choir.  How can one hope to point out the error of cultural norms when most people are firmly entrenched in that culture?  That task is really all but impossible.  So it would seem that satire is largely irrelevant due to the typically small size of its audience.  Moreover, satire, by necessity, tends to be extremely topical and therefore only pertinent to a particular time and place.  What does it matter to today’s society that Aristophanes made fun of the Sophists?  Thus, it would appear that satire lacks the longevity of other art forms to make it culturally important.

Despite these seeming shortcomings, however, satire is one of the most absolutely essential elements of a free society.  It is the satirists who point out when we, as a society, are straying from our moral high ground.  Satirists, often, serve as the harbingers of error in society.  While journalists uncover the horrible events going on in the world, it is the satirist who makes us confront the evils that we ourselves commit.  As people, we tend to take for granted that our convictions are most often in the right, and the satirist stands against that notion to ensure that at least someone knows that we are not always acting in an appropriate way.  Take Jonathan Swift’s “A Model Proposal,” or Mark Twain’s “Huck Finn.”  These two works unrepentantly illuminate the ills of their respective societies.  I cannot imagine a news report more powerful than those finely crafted works of satire.  It is the honesty and humanism of satire that make it so valuable, in that it forces the reader/viewer to reflect upon his own shortcomings.

More importantly, regardless of how wide the audience, the mere fact that satire exists is one of the most telling indicators of a free society.  If there were suddenly no satirical productions I would be very afraid.  The importance of being able to criticize and lampoon those in power cannot be understated.  And though satirists very rarely affect any real change in the world, the simple fact that they are allowed to produce their work assures us that we live in a free society. 

In conclusion, it is readily apparent that satire has never been, nor will ever become, a major force of change in society.  It is simply too limited by its necessarily esoteric nature.  This is not, however, a weakness.  The satirist’s voice need not be heard by everyone, it merely needs to be heard.  For once the voice of criticism is silent, society has truly gone astray.

Before I left the States I had come to the happy realization that there was a spate of new shows on TV that were worth watching after a long drought of subpar viewing entertainment. The top new quality shows were ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and ‘Rules of Engagement’, both of which are now on TV here in South Africa.

Anyway, that got me thinking, what are the top 5 TV shows that you’ve watched and followed in your lifetime?

Rules: you have to have watched it religiously, you have to have seen at least the bulk of its entire library, i.e. most or all of the seasons, and its quality is judged as a whole, i.e. from season 1 to the end.

Here’s my list:

1.      Seinfeld – Easy. Nothing ever was better and even the late seasons where there were some not-so-hot episodes were still good.

2.      West Wing – Could’ve challenged Seinfeld if everything after season 4 wasn’t terrible. Seasons 1-4, however, constitutes the greatest TV ever.

3.      Cheers – My family watched this as family time. It got progressively better through the seasons and was always, always, always funny.

4.      The Cosby Show –I mean the original. Was good from it’s inception, then was great in the middle part of its run, and then took sort of a down turn in the late years when all the random relatives starting showing up and they had like 6 long lost uncles, all of whom were jazz musicians.

5.      M.A.S.H. – We watched this one as a family too. It was great until the cast started shifting around too much and then Alan Alda started directing and got all artsy and ruined the last couple of seasons.

I know I’ve left some out and there are some shows that just need their own category. I mean Real World has to get some sort of mention, but where does that fit in? Likewise, what do you do with miniseries like Band of Brothers? So I think we just have to exclude reality TV and miniseries. Another thought is what if you made a list of top 5 guilty pleasure shows? My guilty pleasure shows would be in this order: Temptation Island (the greatest/worst idea for a reality show ever), Sex in the City, Real World, 90210, and The Hillz.

Anyway, here are some honorable mentions for my top 5 of all time:

The Wonder Years, Murphy Brown, ER (the early years), Scrubs, OZ, Simpsons (geez, how did I forget about that? Maybe that should be number 5 instead of MASH? Yes, consider that amendment made.), South Park, and the list could go on.

So here’s the purpose of this post: 1) what are your top 5 TV shows of all time (I’m sure I’m forgetting some classics), 2) Are there any shows on now that could eventually crack your top 5, 3) what would your top 5 guilty pleasure shows be, and 4) are there any other TV lists that we should make, like best miniseries or best shows you watched as a kid?

Two things:

First, never trust a movie review. Every newspaper I picked up hailed Juno as the greatest movie ever, I went and saw it and 90 minutes in I was still waiting for Jason Bateman to say something funny. It wasn’t horrible, but it has that same too smart, too witty, too quick passed dialogue that you find on the Gilmore Girls (which my sister watches and I make fun of her for it). No Country for Old Men was the same story; great reviews but really just 2 hours of sand, slowly developing story lines, and an ambiguous ending posing as something artsy a la the Sopranos. Anyway, the point is don’t trust movie reviews because you end up liking what they hated and hating what they liked.

Second, I am not one for the hyperbole. I avoid saying stuff like, ‘that was the coolest thing I ever saw’. Instead, I like ranking stuff High Fidelity style. So I actually do know what the coolest thing I ever saw is, so I’m not going to just throw that moniker onto something else without thinking about it long and hard.

All that said, Lions for Lambs is a brilliant movie, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Maybe I should add to that, ‘one of the best I’ve ever seen, for what it was trying to do’ because it is a movie sort of unto itself. Unlike a movie along the lines of Shawshank Redemption, which is in my top 5 movies, Lions for Lambs isn’t really telling a singular story that has a fairly clear message or moral that you’re suppose to glean from it. Rather, Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford by the way, is about as close to postmodern (i.e. there is no answer and the point is unclear) as a movie can get without pissing me off to no end.

I didn’t like Lost in Translation or Broken Flowers or any of those other postmodern, artsy fartsy movies that the critics feign over (Bill Murray should just get the band back together and do Ghostbusters 3). Lions for Lambs leans toward that ‘everything is subjective/what’s the point of it all’ idea, but does so in a way that is situated in reality. Life and the world at large is complex and it’s easy to find yourself wondering ‘what’s the point of it all’ and just withdraw from the bits of society that you don’t like. The point the movie brings out is that you should challenge yourself to deal with the complexities rather than run away from those difficult issues because even though you may not change it, at least you did something.

Basically the movie follows three stories each involving two people. There’s a Professor (Robert Redford) in a meeting with a student, a reporter (Meryl Streep) interviewing a Senator (Tom Cruise), and two soldiers in Afghanistan. The professor is challenging the student, who is very promising but hasn’t come to class in a while, to come back to class and to continue striving for answers to political questions even though all he’s learned from the professor’s politics classes is that it’s all pointless because it’s so fouled up that nothing ever changes. The professor tells him about two students he had a while back who didn’t have the gifts, intellectual or economic, that this student has, but they busted their ass to get to college and then forewent graduate school to join the army because they wanted to put their money where their mouth was and make a difference. Meanwhile these two students are in Afghanistan on a new mission that is going horribly wrong. At the same time, this new mission is being described by a Senator to a reporter because the Senator wants the media to report on this new strategy and give people renewed faith that this war can be won.

What ensues is a discussion of politics, the media, and what citizenship means that is high-minded, thoughtful, enlightening, beautiful, and realistic. The professor didn’t approve of what the two kids who joined the army were doing, but respected why they were doing it. The reporter believes the Senator is well intentioned but also knows that the Senator wants her to sell this new strategy even though it resembles a failed strategy from Vietnam. The Senator knows that the media is just as responsible for the wars as the politicians because wars sell papers and gain viewership. And all the while, the two former students are up to their waist in Afghani snow while the enemy closes in and the one student back home just wants to withdraw from the whole twisted thing.

In the end, there is basically no answer. All that one can really take away with certainty is that the two soldiers are heroic. Yet, given the other two story lines in the movie, it has to be wondered if their heroics are in vain. Thus, it’s possible that the kid back home would be right to just give up on the whole thing. It’s also possible that even with all the crap that goes on in the government, we should all just cowboy up and plow ahead. Just do something to try and help.

No matter what you come away thinking, or if your mind is not made up at all, you will be intellectually provoked. And how often can you say that a movie had that effect on you? I highly, highly recommend this movie. It is well made, entertaining, timely, fair to all sides, incredibly thought provoking and, for me at least, incredibly inspiring.