UNIVERSAL DONOR: MA VIE EN CROUTE
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Universal Donor
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You are just a number to me! And that number is: PAGES UD MADE: My Books Page My Reviews Page My Reference Page My Music Page My Pictures My Store UD-RELATED PAGES: My LiveJournal My MySpace music page My Flickr page My del.icio.us page My Last.fm page My Amazon Wishlist HEAVY ROTATION Dan Deacon: Bromst Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavillion Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes BLOGS ETC claude le monde nuncstans rock 'em stock 'em tomato nation postmodern drunkard tuckova 22 ghastly mess constintina total virility fuzzysquid drunken bee stacey nightmare elyse from ANTM stereolabrat dark side points jf_franklin 123 i love you READ NOW brotherhood 2.0 NOT BLOGS ETC qwantz (dinosaur comix) go fug yourself the burg cat and girl book of ratings married to the sea icanhascheezburger fire joe morgan fivethirtyeight.com READ NOW hospitality on parade WEIRD LOVE dead amusement pks craters! all content © 2002-2010 Jeremy Broomfield 
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Thursday, July 22, 2004
I don't usually think it's a good idea to make public fun of other people's hobbies or obsessions, mostly because I wouldn't want to be held up to the same kind of scrutiny, but also because it's lazy. It's very easy to post a link to a horrifying website, whether about unicorn-fucking, Peter Pan-fucking, or Jesus-fucking, and just let the site make fun of itself. The InTerWeb is so full of possibilties for this kind of humor that entire sites can be devoted to weird links. It's comatose comedy, the humor equivalent of asking your roommate to turn off the living room light because you're too tired to get off the couch and go to your own damn bed. It's like making fun of the way German sounds. It's like laughing at someone who trips just a tiny bit on a crack in the sidewalk. It's like using any of the following words in your humor: monkey, retarded, muumuu, robot, zombie, hammer. Heh. Retarded robot zombie hammer! Lazy -- but funny!
Which brings me to my main point, which is: look at this guy. Ok, did you look? If you're like me, you've been gone for like twenty minutes, having gotten out some snacks, wrapped yourself in an afghan, and settled yourself into a comfy chair and read the entire page at your leisure, savoring every semitransparent unitard disaster mustache photo. Also if you're like me, your boss asked you what's up with the afghan ya weirdo and would you put that chair back in the big boss's office, like now? But you see what I'm saying? This Tron guy really rings my bell not because he seems like he couldn't handle the minor social pressures involved in asking a pretty girl for the time. I like dudes who don't give a fuck about what "mainstream" society thinks and go ahead and paint themselves up a glowing spacesuit. That's the balzac. All right, I've just gone and confused myself about my position on this issue. I'm not really sure how I feel about that guy at all. Slow it down, now. Premise 1: Once you are out of high school, it's not okay to make fun of people just because they are not so gifted, attractiveness-wise. It probably wasn't okay then, either, but it seems to be par for the course, kids being the hideous monsters they are. Obviously people break this rule all the time, but you're not reading their sites. You come here for ethical, emotionally sensitive laffs. [Heh. I was trolling my archives for an ironic link to put after that last sentence, and although I couldn't find something suitably egregious in the 40 seconds I allotted to the task, I did find this gem from March 25, 2003. I think I used to be funnier.] Premise 2: it is okay to make fun of people for bad fashion or grooming choices. Right? It's not like they were born in that muumuu. Fair game! And our Tron guy chose to grow his hair so it looks like he sliced the wings, back, and tail off an eagle and pasted it to his head. Seriously, go look again and you'll see what I mean. This is why people-watching is so universally enjoyed, because you can make fun of anyone who doesn't fit into your limited framework of what it's permissable to wear in public. Everyone can do this! When you were a safety-pinned punk rock kid, you laughed at business people and hippies. Now that you are an adult, you laugh at hippes. But the hippies laugh at you, too! I guess. The mall is society's arena for life's giant stomping parade of people making fun of the way other people look. And, I suppose, buying stuff. I'm gonna add a rider to that last premise: it is okay to make fun of people for bad fashion or grooming choices... unless they are really poor. Because it's not okay to make fun of the fashion choices of those who have never really experienced the concept of "fashion choices." That was a gloomy point! Okay, back to Mr. Trontastic. Is his apparent lack of physical shame something good, something to be encouraged? Like yay, he doesn't feel constrained by popular media-perpetuated notions of beauty? That seems too oversimplified, somehow. I live in New York, after all, which say what you want about it, but the people are hott. Not everybody, of course, but if you lay a hottness histogram of New York over your standard bell curve, you'll see a hunchbacky lump on the side that approaches maximum hottness. Then again, New York is one of the centers from which the media perpetuates their stereotypes of beauty, so is it any wonder that I think New Yorkers are hott? GABBLE! I'm saying maybe a certain amount of physical shame is required by a civilized society. For example, it's what keeps me from walking around in buttless chaps. (You're welcome.) Why do we love to stare at the Tron guy? We are fascinated by the amount of time he spent actually doing something that we would not have spent even a nanosecond thinking about doing. But he's doing something! That's good, right? Does it matter that it is a cripplingly geeky something? YES??!? NO?!? HELP ME!!! Dear Mom: today I spent a lot of time staring at a fat guy in a body stocking, and realizing that I will never be able to write a coherent essay ever again. (Dear Prospective Book-Deal People From HarperCollins Or Whatever: unless I am being paid to do so. Then I will be as coherent as fuck.) 0 comments |
OTHER REVIEWS: Scrabble NEW! LATEST BOOK REVIEWS: The Game Moneyball One-Upsmanship Siddhartha You need the Fear Not Guide to Life. Buy it already. ($4) Now available! The Broomfield Variations CD ($10) or go to The UD Store 
MY IMAGINARY GIRLFRIENDS Chan Marshall Rotem of the IDF Eleanor Friedberger Amy Goodman Bernardine Dohrn ('69) Maya Rudolph Joanna Newsom Imogen Heap Caroline Dhavernas Shana Rae Ray DISALLOWED FOREVER "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you!" - "from whence" - "...the exception that proves the rule" - any use of the question "spit or swallow?" - the phrase "drop trou" - fake-o reviewer verbs: "penned" for wrote "helmed" for directed "lensed" for whatever - "expat" - the euphemism "passed away" - pronouncing merci beaucoup as "mercy buckets!" (see also: "grassy-ass!") PET PEEVES "confinscated" - trying children "as adults" - "drownded" - misuse of reflexive pronouns, as when someone says "Please talk to Bob or myself." Come on people now. "Myself" is not just a fancy version of "me"! LEARN IT. - tattoos in the Courier font - any use of Comic Sans |