The Stormy Present – Society

Let’s think of all the different ways I thought about starting this post (besides for the slightly histrionic title above, which I think I can make a solid case is actually a pretty fair judgement):

“After seeing Kingdom, would anyone be surprised that Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford had plans for world domination, or to buy a boat the size of Australia, or maybe just buy Australia itself; namely, that they needed to produce a ton of capital, and they knew just how to do it?”

“All my hopes and dreams are shattered, and my girlfriend has never even seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, so she has no idea why I’m so sad and angry.”

“Clearly Sean Connery was murdered upon his refusal to star in such a horrendous piece of shit, but they promised him if he posed for a photo, he’d make a brief cameo in the worst movie of all time.”

“I’m not a cynic, but I’m never trusting another movie trailer again.”

Here’s how I’ve actually decided to start this post (BE WARNED: I am going to share all the details about the fourth Indiana Jones movie, in the hopes that you will not see it, and suffer the sort of soul crushing disappoint I did last night).

I knew this was coming. Even though I didn’t let myself read a single review (I always read reviews of movies before I go, I can’t help myself), even though I knew there was no way Spielberg and Lucas could screw up Indiana Jones, even though I knew Harrison Ford was going to turn in the performance of a lifetime, perhaps a farewell bow to the big screen altogether, I knew that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was going to be terrible. The trail to the movie theater was littered with the corpses of awful sequels and trilogies before it: Spiderman 3, X-Men 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, hell let’s go all the way back to the Matrix Revolutions/Reloaded, or all three of the Star Wars prequels (is it me, or am I the only one who prays that our generation will finally stop being obsessed with CGI graphics and want to go back to real explosions and appreciate real stunt men?). There have been so many movies over the past few years that were the second or third in series, really popular, fan favorite series, so many folks excited to see them and be satisfied, and people walk out with that confused look on their face, saying:

“What? Neo can fly in the real world? I thought he was special because he was part of the Matrix?”

“Why is Peter Parker turning into an emo teenager and dancing swing? And who cast the kid from ‘That 70’s Show’ as Venon?”

“Are you telling me that Magneto just lost all his powers? Because he got stung by a dart?”

“What happened at the end to Jack Sparrow? Sorry, I fell asleep thirty minutes in…”

When I said I hated X-Men 3, and Spiderman 3, and the third Pirates of the Caribbean, and several other sequels, people said I was just being a cynical asshole, a ‘movie snob’ (my favorite), that I just needed to relax and enjoy the show. Allow me to yell at the top of my lungs: IF A TRIP TO THE MOVIES IS GOING TO COST UPWARDS OF $40 FOR ME AND MY LADY FRIEND, I BETTER DAMN WELL COME OUT OF THE THEATER CRYING, OR CLUTCHING MY BREAST (YES! MY BREAST!), OR STILL FRIGHTENED, TOUCHED, OR HAVE MY EYES OPENED TO SOME PART OF THE HUMAN CONDITION I NEVER KNEW. Or, at the very least, I better have been really, really entertained for at least an hour and a half.

Needless to say, I was in a mild state of shock at the end of Indy 4. My girlfriend didn’t have to pull out smelling salts or slap me in the face, but I couldn’t believe what I just saw.

It’s not just that Harrison Ford has clearly lost a step, and old age is catching up to him. They could have worked that into the movie, and there were occasions when then did. It wasn’t exactly all the CGI nonsense, although movies (including Star Wars and all the other Indy movies) did extremely well without spending millions on computer graphics. Hell, I might even be willing to forgive the man eating ants; or Shia LaBeouf and Cate Blanchett’s sword fight (apparently LaBeouf’s character took fencing in school for a little while, which gave him more than enough skills to hold his own with a Soviet fencing master- come to think of it, how many female Soviet psychological higher ups in the army carried rapiers, and knew how to handle them so damn well), a sword to sword duel that took place on a remarkably smooth jungle road. Actually the road was only being made moments before by some grand piece of Soviet machinery, then Indy blows it up, and the party finds “Oh, the jungle cleared up for us, 40 yards on each side! Let’s have a car to car sword fight!”; then there was Indy’s quintuple crossing army pal; or the fact that the Red Scare was jarringly glossed over, or the fact that the Soviets wanted the Crystal Skull for world domination through mind control (weak), or that Karen Allen was removed from an old folks’ home to revisit the part of Marion, or of course Mutt is Indy’s son, and of course by the end of the movie everybody’s cool, no big deal, one big, happy, Indiana Jones family, baby! Do you know what would have allowed me to forgive all of this nonsense?

If the ’sacred’ object everyone was chasing after wasn’t crystal, alien, skulls. One more time, for dramatic effect:

CRYSTAL. ALIEN. SKULLS. THAT ALLOW YOU READ PEOPLE’S MINDS. OR SOMETHING. THAT PART IS NEVER MADE CLEAR.

Have George Lucas and Steven Spielberg been visited by aliens? Does that explain the obsession? Are they chuckling themselves to sleep every night, thinking about home much money they’re raking in while ruining what was one of the greatest franchises in movie history, not only in a monetary sense, but in the hearts of fans around the world?

That’s what was so disappointing about this movie. It was a complete departure from the theme in the first three. In Raider’s, Temple, and Last Crusade, Indiana is searching for objects of immense, indescribable power, but the immensity and indescribable qualities of these object’s power is not based on the fact that THE OBJECTS COME FROM SPACE!!!! The Ark holds the remains of the tablets God wrote the Ten Commandments on! The Shankara stones were passed down by Vishnu (I don’t remember which Indian god it was, feel free to correct me) to men! The Cup of Christ was held by the Son of God! You don’t have to believe in these things to allow your imagination to run wild, and to think about concrete objects imbued with the power of the DIVINE, which is BEYOND EXPLANATION. The Divine, which in the movies is always with us, is both of our world, and isn’t. The crystal skull is not of our world, period.

Don’t even get me started on how- there is no other word- INSULTING the cave paintings in the movie were. Towards the end of the flick, Indy and company are almost to the last room (where a whole bunch of crystal alien skeletons are just sitting around, hanging out) when Indy finds painting of the aliens teaching humans about agriculture, and irrigation, and who knows what else. Hey, thanks a lot aliens, if it weren’t for you, we’d just be bashing each other’s brains in and eating our stillborn babies for protein, but since you came along, your taught us how to grow shit and spread water across long distances and build pretty buildings (the pyramids are implied to have been built by the aliens, too, of course). If one of the most important themes underlying the Indiana Jones movies is the idea of real life object touched by the power of gods, then the next most important thing is the real life importance of archeology, the study of where people came from, and how understanding the deep and distant past of human life can better help us understand today (I know this is a stretch, but go with it). When Indy and his company get to the ‘city of gold’, they find out it’s not gold, but treasure, and the treasure is a bunch of archaeological artifacts, supposed COLLECTED BY THE ALIENS, and brought back to SOUTH AMERICAN WHERE THEY CHILLED OUT. What’s the story here, Lucas? Aliens created modern human existence as we know it through agriculture, helped them build all these cool civilizations, and then went around pilfering their shit?

It just makes no sense, the entire movie makes no sense. Fuck the mysterious power of God that most cultures throughout the world believe in. Fuck the thousands of years of human struggle to learn how to build human civilization out of nothing, it was started by aliens. Fuck the loyal fans of these movies, who expected so much better than what we were given. And finally, fuck the idea of ever getting caught up in movie franchise so much that I’m literally fuming after watching the film.

My apologies that this post does not flow, is not well organized, does not follow a straight and steady course. I figured it would make more sense to just go with a slightly modified stream of consciousness, let people know just how furious I am about this movie. For those of you who are thinking, “Geez, what a movie snob,” go back to watching Baywatch and let the big kids talk.

Shit.

I have posed this question to various groups of friends of mine and I think the answer is very interesting in that at first it seems wrong and then starts to make sense. The question is this: who is the greatest actor of our generation?

Now there’s two ways to look at this. First, you could say that this implies that the actor has to be around our age and has to have made movies that were popular or instrumental during our formative years and continues to do so as we have gotten older. The second way to look at it would be to scratch the age limit and just ask who has made the most number of popular and quality movies during our serious movie watching lifetime thus far.

To me the second way of looking at it is too broad and almost too easy when you consider the filmography of Tom Hanks. So for the sake of this discussion let’s focus on the constraint that the actor must be around our general age. That means since we are, for the most part, in our late 20s, the actor has to also be in his late 20s or early 30s.

With that set as the standard, my special lady friend and I, who have had this conversation many times, could come up with no one better than Leonardo DiCaprio (born in 1974 according to IMDb).

I know what you’re thinking; no way he is it, but God knows we tried to come up with someone better and couldn’t. In fact, the more you think about it the more it starts to make perfect sense. His greatest credential for the title of greatest actor of our generation is Titanic, which I didn’t like but made more money than Halliburton so that has to mean something. Plus, it came out right when we were in our teens. With that as his big draw for the mantle of ‘greatest actor of our generation’, think about his other movies:

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (quality flick all around)

The Beach (quality movie up until the end where is goes sorta wacky)

Gangs of New York (Daniel Day Lewis was the only saving grace of that crap movie, but Leo wasn’t bad in it)

The Aviator (yet another blockbuster, not a great movie, but he acted well in it)

Catch Me if You Can (didn’t keep my attention, but not bad)

The Departed (one of my favorite movies and he is phenomenal in it)

Blood Diamond (really good movie and he was great it that as well)

See, a look at that resume and there’s no denying that the guy has been in a lot of really big movies. Even though not all of his movies were great, his recent stuff has been of the highest quality, which only adds to the idea that he’s growing as an actor as he, and us, get older.

Now there’s two guys to consider who might displace Leo. First is Leo’s costar in Gilbert Grape, Johnny Depp. While there is no denying that his acting chops are far better than Leo’s and that his range of characters are better and his range of movie genres is better, he is in his 40s (born in 1963 according to IMDb) so it’s hard to call him the greatest actor of OUR generation. The other option is Matt Damon. The Oceans movies and Bourne trilogy put big budget movies under his belt and everyone loves Good Will Hunting. Add in Geronimo (one of my favorite movies and easily the most under watch good movie of all time), Syriana, The Talented Mr Ripley, Legend of Bagger Vance, and Saving Private Ryan and he could make a run at the title. However, he is in his late 30s (born in 1970 according to IMDb), so that puts him over the age limit.

Thus, as far as I can tell, Leo is the greatest actor of our generation considering he is within our age range and has racked up some impressive and monumental movies during our movie watching careers so far. But let me know what you think. Is there someone else in our age range to dethrone Leo? Is the age limit too restrictive? And the hardest question of all, who is the greatest actress of our generation using the same age guidelines? I think it has to be Natalie Portman, but toss some other candidates out there.

A Note to the Reader: I am not now nor have ever been a good writer. You will find this out for yourself if you continue reading. I am, however, a person with a slightly above average interest in music. This being the case my good friend Jim asked me to compose an article on this subject for his blog, The Stormy Present, several months ago. At the time my brain was awash with visions of benzene rings, kinematic equations, and erythrocytes as I was attempting to be a devoted student. For the past week I have been relaxing by a mountain stream in central Wyoming. This therapeutic local has allowed me the calm I needed to write several pages of nonsense about popular music. Enjoy!

We’ve all done it. As our favorite song is playing our iPod (or perhaps Zune) we search the device’s menu for our second favorite song; and just as the music begins to fade we simply push a button and we receive instant gratification. Many of us have made playlists of our favorite songs, too. Again, with a few simple finger movements we are getting exactly what we desire. Only the order of the songs may change with every listening.

This technology is, of course, wonderful. I enjoy being the DJ of my life, but I sometimes find myself longing for the bygone era when a single album was consumed at any given time; and the editorial choices of song order were as much a part of the music enjoyment as the songs themselves. When I made the choice to listen to a vinyl record (from my parent’s collection) I knew I was in it for the long haul. As I listened to Abbey Road I may have found the somewhat bizarre Octopus’s Garden tedious; but was it really worth all of the effort to carefully move the needle to the next song? If I was careless I may damage the record. Besides, I knew in just a few minutes George would be singing Here Comes the Sun, the “long, cold, lonely winter” would be over, and it would indeed be “alright.”

The story for cassette tapes is similar. Many years ago I tried to hone my fast-forwarding skills. I believed I could release the fast-forward button at the precise moment when the song I desired would start. The hum of the whirling wheels in the tape and my internal clock were my only guides. All too often, however, I would catch the awkward point of the preceding song just at its crescendo, or I would stumble upon the desired song long after the first chorus. Damn! Then I was left with the difficult choice: Do I just listen to the rest of the song, or do I press rewind and hope I find the beginning this time around? An old Cat Stevens tape was left behind by the previous owner of my first car. The tape was on its last legs after being damaged by the heat and sun. I never fast-forwarded or rewound it in the fear that it might break. So, I listened to many great, but less loved, songs as I eagerly awaited my next ride on the Peace Train.

With CDs I came a step closer to being in complete control of my music consumption. CD players allowed me to select a desired track with a simple push of a button. I found this new technology valuable quite frequently in the 90s when purchasing albums based on the merits of one song. Upon realizing that the rest of the songs (save perhaps one) were filler I enjoyed being able to jump right to the one I wanted and disregarding the rest. This process eventually became tedious. If I was going to go through all of the trouble of changing the CD in my player – which somehow always required great dexterity and a third hand – I wanted to make certain that I would listen to more than one song. So, the albums with only one decent tune collected dust while albums with true merit spent more time in my player. Weezer’s debut and REM’s Automatic for the People were among my mid-nineties favorites as each and every song was of a consistent quality.

When I bought my first iPod I was finally in complete control of my music listening destiny. I could choose any song at any time; and I didn’t have to move a needle, press fast-forward, or change a CD to do so. This freedom, however, led to unforeseen problems. I consistently skipped less desired songs, and I overplayed my favorites. I no longer appreciated the artist’s body of work. Like the excitement created by a roller coaster slowly climbing its tracks I no longer allowed anticipation to build by listening to the complete album. I soon realized that I was powerless over my musical desires. I couldn’t get my fix of one song, and I was neglecting all of the other music.

For people suffering from a similar affliction I have created “Derrick’s Hands Free Song List,” which includes collections of a least three (really good) songs that appear consecutively on one album. The list is so named because you won’t have to push a single button on your mp3 player once the music begins. Of course, I could have listed entire albums that are consistently great, but I figure we should take baby steps. After living for so long in the era of instant gratification we should move slowly back towards full album appreciation. Listening to these songs in the order that the artist/producer intended will hopefully add to the enjoyment. So, I have included the antiquated track numbers. Also, if you are like me and still live in a much more analog time. You may use your car’s (or home’s) CD player from time to time.

New listening devices have revolutionized the way we consume music. Many of these changes have been improvements. If an artist is only interested in producing one decent song per album, why should I waste my money or memory on the filler? Being able to play the perfect song for a specific social situation has only been a reality in the mp3 age. Even with all of these improvements, however, it is my hope that I (and others like me) will someday return to a full appreciation of an artist’s work instead of just buying singles from iTunes. Just as we read every chapter in a novel we should appreciate every song on an album in the context it was meant to be appreciated. Maybe I will be able to recreate those moments of discovery I had with my parent’s records and old cassette tapes. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go listen to Toto’s Africa for the twenty-third time today. I hope you enjoy the list.

Derrick’s Hands Free Song List

Artist: Super Furry Animals,

Album: Rings Around the World

Songs and Track Numbers: 10. Juxtaposed with U, 11. Presidential Suite, 12. Run! Christian, Run!

Description: This Welsh outfit somehow toes the line between intensely emotional and raucous humor (often within a single song). The above tracks are prime example of this unique talent.

Artist: Radiohead

Album: The Bends

Songs and Track Numbers: 2. The Bends, 3. Fake Plastic Trees, 4. High and Dry

Description: You don’t need me to tell you that Radiohead is one of the best bands going today. While many consider OK Computer their seminal effort this album is my favorite. The above three songs are prime examples of how a band can maintain it’s rock and roll ethics while still producing beautiful music.

Artist: The Stone Roses

Album: The Stone Roses

Songs and Track Numbers: 11. This is the One, 12. I am the Resurrection, 13. Fools Gold (American Release)

Description: The Stone Roses were the primary band in a brief, but influential era in British popular music. I could have chosen any three songs in succession off of this album. It’s just that good. This is the One is often played before Manchester United matches to get the fans excited.

Artist: Badly Drawn Boy

Album: The Hour of Bewilderbeast

Songs and Track Numbers: 1. The Shining, 2. Everybody’s Stalking, 3. Bewilder, 4. Fall in a River

Description: Okay, you’re right. There are four songs on this list, but the third track is just a brief interlude. Bewilderbeast really can only be appreciated as an album. Each song is beautifully woven into the next and many musical themes from early in the album show-up later on

Artist: Oasis

Album: The Masterplan

Songs and Track Numbers: 1. Acquiesce, 2. Underneath the Sky, 3. Bewilder, 4. Talk Tonight

Description: By including Oasis on this list I have probably lost all credibility with half of my readership. Hence, they are the last entry. Strictly speaking The Masterplan is not an album. Rather it is a collection of very good B-sides that the brothers Gallagher would have been wise to save for later in their career when Noel pretty much forgot how to write music.

My sophomore year in college I saw a show that changed my life. To this day, I consider it to be one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen. This show was Adventure Bound with Alby Mangels.

Alby was, and still is I suppose, an Australian with curly blonde hair and a penchant for wearing daisy duke shorts (the show was filmed during the 70s and 80s). The show was basically him and a friend filming themselves on various adventures around the world as they undertook what he called, ‘world safaris’. They started in the Aussie outback and then made it to South America and Africa. His adventures included being gored by a wild boar, flying a helicopter loaded with Rebels in the DRC who fired at enemy targets en route, sailing the high seas, canoeing up to African elephants, a bad car wreck in South America in which his friend suffered terrible injuries, and many other tales of interest. He was completely cavalier when it came to his travels and ended up partnering up with a sundry of locals and travelers of dubious character in friendships and even business deals. Only at the end of his adventures when he purchased a nice catamaran sail boat did he ever have a mode of transportation, be it a car, airplane, helicopter, or boat, that wasn’t inches away from collapsing. Even more impressive than his ability to pilot all those vehicles was his ability to jimmy-rig them every time they broke down. And through all his trials and tribulations he was always jovial and continued his brazen approach toward adventure undaunted. Of course, I was also impressed by how he was typically joined by various hot women on his journeys.

I could go on and on, but the point is I loved every minute of this show and it sort of inspired my own approach to world travel. I enjoyed the show so much that I ignored the instances of, shall we say, oddity. For instance, while he was careening out of control in his truck toward a cliff the camera cut to a shot of his feet slamming on the brakes, then cut back to the car coming to a stop mere feet from the precipice. Now how did this sequence occur? Did they actually almost go off a cliff and then splice in footage of him hitting the brakes afterwards? Or did they manufacture the whole thing? There are other times when a critic could question whether or not the show was merely leaning toward reality or sliding towards a fictionalization of realistic situations.

About a year ago I found a similar show called Man vs Wild, starring Bear Grylls. Basically Bear just drops into some harsh environment and then, followed by a camera crew, shows the viewer how to get out alive with only a flint, some water, and a knife. It’s highly entertaining and my special lady friend and I were always quick to flip to it when it was on. However, after the initially coolness of the show’s premise wore off the awe with which I looked at Bear began to fade. My special lady friend and I ended up openly questioned how legitimate the show was. ‘Does he really need to repel down that waterfall, it looks like he could go around?’

Then the truth came out. Bear admitted to eating five course meals with the crew at their base camp, the crew helped him fish and build shelters, he used local guides to point him the right direction, animals are left by locals or producers for him to give demonstrations with, and he even has slept indoors during filming. Horrifying right? A guy that I put on a pedestal due to his ability to do all the stuff I wish I knew how to do in the wild was faking it.

Ultimately I think this gets to the question: what is adventure? For me this is an important question because if you asked me to sum up in one word was I most wanted in my own life, that word would be ‘adventure.’

Bear Grylls ends up representing a sort of yuppie fascination or flirtation with adventure. Bear did a lot of cool stuff and it undeniably hardcore, but it strikes me as somehow false or unwarranted. To me, it feels like someone who has studied and worked out to be mentally and physically prepared for a wilderness challenge and then they go into the wilderness in order to test what they’ve learned. It is a lot like school in that respect. And just like school, once the person completes the test, they simply go back to their normal everyday lives. It’s advocating a sort of adventure tourism where you purposely create a tough situation and then try to get out of it using the prearranged skill set you’ve developed. That’s why I’d say this Bear Grylls approach to adventure is really just flirting with the idea of adventure.

Conversely, I think Alby fully commits himself to adventure. Alby didn’t plan to have his car break down or for a guy in a bar to challenge his friend to a bare knuckle boxing match; that stuff just happened. Alby didn’t just take an adventure vacation, he lived an adventure. While Bear, who it turns out is an Evangelical Christian which makes the fact that he lied about not getting any help during his trials all the more funny, seems to want to put across the message that each of us should take a break from the day to seek out an adventure, Alby puts across the message that adventure should be our lifestyle. You don’t have to try and hike across the Amazon Rainforest to find adventure, just pack some stuff in a car and start driving and you’re sure to have adventure find you.

This is how I try to look at my life, and when you adopt that mentality you realize that adventure waits around every corner and that you don’t have to be some yuppie with all the latest North Face gear to experience it. This is also why I don’t care if Alby finagled some of the facts about his stories of adventure whereas it does bother me that Bear was misrepresenting himself. Bear made adventure out to be a sort of test that you can put yourself through every once in a while, and not only do I dislike that test-like approach to adventure, but it turns out that he was cheating on the test. Alby, on the other hand, was living adventure so even if nothing ‘extreme’ happened to him, it was an adventure.

In conclusion, my idea of adventure, the idea which I try to live my life in accordance with, is that adventure just means meeting life and all the obstacles it presents head on. You throw caution to the wind constantly, you take your chances every chance you get, you do whatever the hell you want to do (while being respectful to other) however the hell you want to do it and live with the consequences. So if you fail or get stuck or your car breaks down or your boat sinks, you can still smile because that is simply your adventure. You didn’t take orders from others. You lived your own life. That is adventure and that is why Alby Mangels is far better than Bear Grylls.

Listen, you need to be watching 30 Rock. If you already are and it feels like I’m accosting you, I’m sorry, but last week was the season two finale, and if you like watching the TV from time to time, you know there’s nothing networks love doing more than axing smart, clever comedic shows in favor of the next version of Survivor, or American Gladiators, or any other ‘reality’ TV show that strays so far from reality you can only shake your head, grimace like you just ate a bad olive, and think, “God, do I want to bring kids into a world that considers this reality?”.

Consider this an introduction and endorsement for the uninitiated to 30 Rock, one of the funniest damn shows on television. There’s also going to be some musing on how DVD’s have affected television series, and finally some waxing poetic about the zenith of primetime TV, and what that meant to myself a few years back.

For those of you who do watch 30 Rock, you know that it is simply a brilliantly written show, with layer upon layer of jokes that venture into any and all territory. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the lead writer on a once popular show on NBC that is quickly losing steam. Enter Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin in the role he was born to play), a profit driven, demographic obsessed, NBC executive whose chest swells as much due to his role in the development of a new GE convection oven as it does from working in prime time television.* In an effort to revamp the show’s declining ratings, Donaghy suggests, then insists, and ultimately forces Lemon to cast eccentric pop icon Tracy Jordan, (Tracy Morgan). What was once was a team effort essentially morphs into a one-man show, albeit a more popular and successful one. Fey has admitted that the show is a look into her experiences as the head writer for Saturday Night Live. While it’s not clear who Baldwin’s character is based on, Morgan might very well be playing a dramatized version of his real life persona. If that seems unfair, look up ‘Tracy Morgan interviews’ on YouTube, and you’ll find that Morgan is a talented, hilarious, and quite possibly unstable individual.

What causes me to worry about 30 Rock is the type of humor is does so well. Like Arrested Development before it, there is no laugh track, meaning you have to actually pay attention to what’s said, and even then you might not get all the jokes.** Also similar to Arrested Development is the presence of a continuing story throughout the season, which might throw off the casual viewer. As a neophyte myself, I didn’t tune in to last week’s finale, not because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to follow or understand that week’s plot- each show is a new, tightly woven little package of funny- but because it’s a show that’s best watched in sequential order. The under girding story is easier to pick up, you begin to develop a greater understanding of each character, not to mention you catch all the subtle references to past shows, which gives you that slightly smug feeling of being an insider that no one wants to admit to enjoying. For someone flipping through the channels and landing on the show halfway through, you have no idea who the characters are, and unless you stop to pay attention (who does that when channel surfing?), you might not even figure out it’s a comedy.

This brings me to the role of DVD’s in enjoying a TV series nowadays. Above I mentioned that to best enjoy 30 Rock, you should watch it in order. What I failed to say was that I haven’t seen a one whole episode of either season on TV, because I can’t stand to watch TV shows while they are on TV! DVD collections allow you to knock out a whole season in a single weekend, if you have that sort of couch stamina. While watching the whole first season a few weekends ago, I marveled that I haven’t heard more about this series. Ironically I could be affecting the health of my new favorite distraction. If people don’t watch or become fans of a show until it comes out on DVD, research numbers might lead a network to cancel it. (Some people think this might have been what happened to Family Guy- yet again, we’re talking about Fox, the ultimate champion of scratching smart and funny shows- and that Family Guy was only brought back because the sales of its season DVD’s were so strong.) Bewildered networks are left to deal with hostile fans, mad that their favorite show was cancelled, even though they weren’t watching it when it came on television, only when it hit the shelves in DVD form.

The loss of enjoying a show on a weekly basis brings to my mind the heyday of Seinfeld. When I was in the ninth grade, I was still the awkward new kid, still trying to make friends, bravely (at least in my memory) wedging myself into tables of kids I thought were cool. Jeff and Trey were among the first guys I joked around with on a regular basis, and this was almost exclusively because of Seinfeld. Come Friday at lunchtime, a group of fifteen, 15-year-old boys would lump around a table made for eight, and we’d repeat line for line the previous night’s episode of Seinfeld. If I forgot the bit about Kramer feeding a horse Beef-O-Reeno, Jeff would bring it up. If Jeff forgot the look on Jerry’s face as he ran from the screaming old lady with that marble rye tucked tightly under his arm, Trey did his best impersonation. If Trey failed to remember what Elaine was doing that episode, I was there to tie up loose ends. And after reciting almost every line of the past episode, we’d proceed to break down how genius it was (I remember us mostly saying things like ‘that shit is so funny’ as opposed to analyzing the perfect pitch and syntax of each line; though that’s all we are really saying now when we use slight larger vocabularies, it’s the same thing: “that shit was off the hook!”).

For all of us, our Seinfeld reviews were master classes in comedic timing and writing, even if we didn’t know it. For me, they were instant conversation starters for a shy new kid, and a doorway to some pretty good friendships I maintain to this day. So if for no other reason than the fact that some awkward teenager in some middle school lunchroom needs one opening line of conversation at least once a week, check out 30 Rock.***

*Side note: the show also does a spectacular job parodying NBC, especially the corporate conglomerate side of its existence. There’s one scene in the first season when every character is drinking Snapple and talking about how tasty and delicious it is, and though you know that Snapple most be part of the GE family of brands, and you want to be upset that Tina Fey is in essence pimping its products on the show, they do it in such a funny and likable way you forgive them… And then think about how nice a Kiwi Strawberry would be, right now…

**Hopefully 30 Rock can last longer than Arrested Development, which didn’t stand a change against reruns of ‘When Bears Attack Scrabble Conventions 17’ on Fox. Of course, who’s to say that a show should try to stay on for as long as possible? I’ve always been a huge fan of the British version of The Office, in part because it only lasted two seasons. There are no wasted words or scenes in that series, everything feels fresh, perhaps because the writer’s didn’t feel like they had to hold back, or keep a little something left in the tank. That’s all speculation, I don’t know who decided to make just two seasons of The Office, only that if that was a decision from the get go, maybe it wasn’t a bad one. Part of the beauty of 30 Rock, in my opinion, is that all the dialogue and plot sequences have the feeling of tightness, of ‘just right’.

***Sorry about the footnotes, I recently read some David Foster Wallace, and he rubbed off. I thought I’d use this last note to say that I love Tina Fey like it’s my job, and I have to deny this to my lady friend all the time. Example: Lady Friend [with a slightly mocking smile on her face] “God, you love Tina Fey, don’t you?” Me [trying not to blush]: “No…”

What does it mean to be a Southerner? OK, first of all this is painful for me and isn’t going to be one of my best efforts because I hate the topic of identity, but I promised to discuss it in my post about Senator Obama’s race speech. Second, this is completely subjective. Third, structure-wise I’m going to use this post to describe what I think a Southerner is and then in get into how this might relate to race in America circa the Senator’s speech. Alright, here goes:

Southern Identity

I’m old school so I want to immediately cut out the people who claim to be true Southerners but are really just products of the New South. These New South people, as I see it, are typically preps who dress like 5 year olds who were dressed by their mothers and this fashion trend persists until they are old men. The Duck Head shorts with collared shirt tucked in and loafers. These people are typically products of a privileged white collar family who end up working white collar jobs like their parents but for more money (i.e. they become lawyers). That’s the New South, a sort of scaled back version of the upscale, disconnected, money seeking, elitist persona I would associate with Northerners. Have I pissed anyone off yet? Well hang with me as I make my point and then feel free to tell me what a douche I am in the comments.

Now that I’ve established what I think the Southern identity isn’t let me say what I think it is. I think Southern identity could best be summed up as an identity set in a proud struggle that is futile, but nevertheless refuses to change on the basis of principle, for better or worse.

To elaborate on my view of Southern identity I’d point out that it makes sense historically. From the beginning, the South was an agrarian society, constantly struggling to wrest a living out from the ground. This dependence on farming, which I believe was entrenched by the North’s colonizing of the South (we’ll save this for another time), meant that slavery and race would have to be struggled with since it was invariably tied to the agrarian lifestyle. As slaves outnumbered whites and as the North moved to rid the country of slavery, the South, knowing it was grossly overmatched struggled on to defend their way of life. I’m not saying that was a good thing; just that it represents a futile struggle and an instance where they refused to change despite the fact that changing might have saved them from their demise. Once modernization was attempted in the South the wealthy monopolists of the North stood in their way (for example, steel from Alabama was taxed higher than steel from Pennsylvania to preserve the interests of the wealthy Northern steel magnates). Thus, attempts to modernize in a distinctly Southern way were doomed to fail. And now in present day, the South has the worst schools and the lowest per capita income, and yet we still struggle on knowing that not once in our history have we been allowed to succeed. And what separates the New South from the Real South is that if the opportunity to succeed is presented to a Real Southerner; he/she will not take it if it necessitates the compromising of their principles whereas someone of the New South ilk will. There is a sense of pride in the struggle that success would negate. Thus, as I see it, Southern identity is defined by a proud struggle that is ultimately futile, but resistant to change on the basis of principle, for better or worse.

How this Relates to Identity and Race in America

Let me begin restating that I hate this topic of identity. I hate that my Master’s dissertation had a huge chunk of it devoted to Charles Taylor’s book Multiculturalism and Franz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth. I was reminded of my dislike for ‘identity issues’ the other month when my special lady friend asked me to go to a talk on the subject of race in South Africa. That discussion pretty much broke down to the question: can a black person be racist? I thought to myself, ‘yes, of course.’ Thankfully I didn’t verbalize this thought because just about everyone else in the room thought otherwise. The general consensus was that black people cannot be racist, only white people can. That was so unanimously agreed upon by the bulk of the audience and panel that the only remaining issue was whether or not Jews counted as white people, because the speaker, a Jewish woman, thought that Jews, like black people were incapable of racism.

This has nothing to do with what it means to be a Southerner, but I bring it up to make the point that postmodernism/postcolonialism/poststructuralism/post-etc’s obsession with identity and the privileged position of minority groups is stupid. That gets me to Kwame Appiah.

Kwame Appiah’s dad is from Ghana, (I think his mom is an African America), he is black, and gay. He’s got a lot of minority groups covered. And as a philosopher studying identity his basic point is that group identity is important to an individual in the sense that he wouldn’t be the same person if he didn’t define part of himself as ‘gay’ or ‘black’; but those group identities do not define the individual in a deterministic way. Rather, the individuals inside the group define the group. Appiah points out that group identities too strongly defined squash individual identity and create consternation within the society they exist when they refuse adapt to other group identities and other individuals within a common society.

Think about Canada; Charles Taylor’s home. Taylor is sort of the father of multiculturalism, which just means letting everyone minority group fully express their uniqueness within the larger society. Nice idea, but Taylor’s own home country, and he admits this, presents multiculturalists with a problem. The French Canadians, who are free to celebrate their unique cultural what-have-you with in Canadian society, want to leave Canada. And there in lies the problem, if you get too focused on parochial group identity, you can’t coexist with anyone not in your own group.

In short, if you spend all day thinking about what it means to be black, white, gay, Christian, whatever, you’re not only wasting your time but you also end up impeding social adhesion and therein progress.

So how does this relate to Southern identity? Well remember when I dissed all the people who wear collared shirts and whatnot, they can still fit into how I ultimately defined Southern identity. In fact, I have qualities of both the Southern identity that I advocate and prefer as well as qualities consistent with my negative description of the New South (not in terms of fashion sense, but other ones). One’s idea of identity is not only subjective, but exists as a sort of Platonic form that even the person coming up with the idea can’t really achieve. So to define yourself totally and wholly within such a notion of identity pigeon holes you to the point that your interaction with people subscribing to a different identity can’t speak to you. If you define a group identity too broadly, it cedes its uniqueness. Conversely, if you define it too narrowly, it is so unique that is jibes with the rest of society. This is why postcolonial writers embrace the idea that ‘the subaltern’ can’t speak, which just means that people from one group can’t understand people from another group. Well that may be true to a degree, but if you embrace that unique identity too much there can’t be any cohesion. In my opinion, this is huge roadblock in South Africa because so much attention is paid to identity and protecting that ethereal idea that physically, on the ground, things are much harder to achieve.

The bottom line is that I am never going understand what it is like to be Senator Obama because I am not the same race, not from the same place, didn’t have the same upbringing, nor the same education, and so on and so forth. And while I think each of us should embrace own uniqueness, I wouldn’t advise that we embrace it to the extent that dialogue between us becomes impossible. Hence, I would say that race in America needs to be approached with the understanding that while it is an important part of a person and a part that can’t be fully comprehended by someone of a different race, it must not become an aspect of identity that negates dialogue or racial cohesion.

To me, the beauty of Senator Obama’s race speech is that he simply asked for greater dialogue concerning race and identity in America; and it is that very dialogue that will allow us to recognize the uniqueness of other racial or minority groups while engaging with one another, thereby ensuring that our group identities don’t hamper social cohesion and progress toward an America unified through the embracement of difference.