Allow me to apologize for being creepy…
I am not creepy. OK, maybe I am. I honestly don’t know. That is because “being creepy” is pretty subjective.
Is a person following you or is he just headed to the same place you are? Unless you are also a mind-reader (they walk among us), you probably won’t ever know — barring said stalker saying, “I’m following you! How am I doing?”
That said, I am perpetually worried that I am being perceived as creepy in situations where I am genuinely not trying to do anything creepy at all.
At the gym? I try not to look around. Situational awareness is great if you’re a security guard or Jason Bourne or something. But Greg Elwell will either zone out and listen to his music or watch whatever’s showing on the TV. Look around too much and you’re bound to meet eyes with someone and BOOM! Creepy.
“Does he/she think I’m staring at him/her? I’m already sweaty and gross and now he/she thinks I’m a stalker? Awesome.”
And, honestly, it’s hard NOT to stare at a he/she. I mean, if somebody has half a face that’s a man with a moustache and a tuxedo and the other half is a buxom blonde in a crimson cocktail dress, you can’t not look. And what the hell is he/she doing in the gym dressed like that? You can’t climb the StairMaster in those clothes!
At the grocery store, I am perpetually convinced that people think I’m going to steal their babies. And I cannot make this clear enough — I’m not even sure I want a baby that is half me, much less some strange baby being pushed around Crest.
So, you know, if you see me out and I appear to be creepy, please accept my regrets. I certainly don’t mean to be creepy; though now that I think of it, the hooded sweatshirt, sunglasses and ski mask (and the lack of pants) might be giving everybody the wrong impression.
Again…sorry.
Normal is whatever you are
My friend’s mom cooked green beans with almonds. I freaked out.
As a kid, you get to know things as “normal” because you do them all the time. My mom cooked canned green beans with a little bacon fat and a little sugar. I didn’t know what a fresh green bean tasted like until I was in high school and I didn’t learn to like them until much later.
So when I went to my friend’s house and got this alien green bean almondine, I politely ate a bite and a half and thought, “I’m never coming here for dinner again. These people are insane.”
Of course, the way I live my life now would have been just as insane to 8-year-old me. Sleeping without a night light? Wearing a tie? Eating macaroni and cheese that isn’t straight out the box? That kid would have an aneurysm.
But I’ve come to view the arguments I made as childish, which isn’t surprising, because I was a child. Sadly, too many people still make those arguments now, and they’re supposed to be adults.
Normal is whatever you are. Normal is however you live your life, because normal is relative. There are things I do that would seen foreign to lots of you and vice versa. But guess what? You don’t have to live my life. You have your own. Live it however you see fit.
A co-worker told me today that she doesn’t have a TV at home. I couldn’t live like that, I told her, but if she can survive with two kids and a husband and no idiot box, go for it. Who am I to judge? I probably watch too much TV. But that’s how I choose to live my life and I like it just fine.
It’s time to condense
If ever there was an argument for better health care, it is the state of our pop culture. There is simply too much going on for us to understand and enjoy in one lifetime. Either doctors need to figure out how to keep us alive and lucid for longer, or we need to start putting our brains into robot bodies, a la “Sealab 2021.”
But since Congress is busy screwing up healthcare and scientists are busy coming up with “the new cigarette,” we have to take steps of our own to sort this mess out.
That is why I think we need to condense. Let’s take all of this pop culture ephemera and blend it together — like a smoothie, but useless celebrities and stupid fads in place of yogurt and berries.
For instance, there are vampires everywhere now. There are literally more vampires on TV shows right now than there are high school kids pretending to be vampires.
And with vampires comes all the other MGM movie monsters, so we have to deal with wolfmen and mummies and zombies and Frankenstein’s monsters.
At the same time, we have far too many useless “celebrities” who are famous for a) sex tapes, b) having too many kids and c) being rich and stupid.
I can’t keep up with them all, nor should I have to. So let’s mash the crap out of this stuff and get what we really want — an undead Jon Gosselin with a harem of middle-aged, not-particularly-attractive vampire ladies, while his shrieking ex Kate walks around screaming, “Fire bad! Jon bad! Fire bad Jon!” And, I don’t know, maybe the kids are zombies? They certainly will be soon enough.
Paris Hilton? She should be a mummy. And that’s more for our safety than anything. In fact, let’s wrap all the Kardashians up in bandages, too. If you have a “celebrity” sex tape, you need your brain removed through your nose. (As if most of these people still have brains.)
Tune in next week as I cram together the confusing plotlines of “Lost,” “Flashforward” and “The Sopranos” with the Washington political elite!
Insulting advice from people smarter than you
Hello, you drooling, unwashed sacks of germs. How are your disgusting lives today? Good, good. What’s that? You’re afraid of catching swine flu? Then might I suggest you stop wallowing in your own filth?
Every year since all the newspapers and TV stations made a pact to stop covering real news and just make stuff up (re: 1997), reporters have been forced to “report” on nonsensical things. Like how not to get sick.
“But I’m very interested in that! How is it not news?”
Well, news usually means something is new. Something needs to happen for it to be news. (I suppose news could be nothing happening, but only if it was something we were used to happening, like Old Faithful not going off.)
And there’s nothing really new about flu and cold season, at least when it comes to prevention. Here is a list of the most common sense crap in the world which you should be doing regardless of airborne illnesses.
#1 Wash your hands.
#2 Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. (And do #1 again.)
#3 If you’re sick, stay home and get better.
#4 Try eating a vegetable that isn’t french fries. And maybe drink some water instead of soda.
And every year, people ask the same questions, even though those rules never change. And then people get uppity when a doctor is “condescending” to them. Maybe it’s because, if you can’t remember to all of those things without a doctor telling you, you’re on a lower level.
That’s when condescending has to happen — when you’re below the norm. Morons.
Stay Away From My Wife!
My wife has been talking more lately about having a kid and, frankly, I’m against the whole notion.
It’s not that I have anything against children in theory. They learn things and say cute malapropisms and sometimes they sleep. But the practice of having kids seems…ugly.
There’s poop, for one thing. And crying and snot and sometimes they don’t sleep. And you get in trouble if you leave one alone for a few days at a time because they “can’t feed themselves” or “roll over.”
And kids in general tend to have unhappy consequences on things I love. Like pictures of inappropriate nudity. And ribald humor. And alcohol.
People are always saying, “Think about the children!” And I do think about them. I think, “Why are these children screwing up a good time?”
But if I had to nail down my biggest objection to my wife having a kid, it’s that I don’t want her sleeping with some other guy. I mean, she can’t possibly be thinking about having a kid with me. Let’s be honest, nobody is eager to have my genes polluting the pool for generations to come.
I’m like Hitler and Tila Tequila rolled into one. I’m history’s greatest monster. A smaller version of me won’t do anybody any good.
Austin City Limits Music Festival: Wrap-Up
Toward the end of Pearl Jam’s show-closing performance, the last of their songs Eddie Vedder sang was “Alive.”
The final lyric wrapped up the show for those of us who braved through a sea of mud, which turned out to be mixed with a certain amount of sewage.
“I’m still alive”
Three days, more than 150 bands, monsoon rains and the perfectly manicured, golf-course quality grass metamorphosed into a soupy swill that rendered all footwear save for rubbers useless.
But that didn’t stop the B-52s, Arctic Monkeys, Ben Harper, Michael Franti & Spearhead, or Pearl Jam from putting on a spectacle worthy of the final day of a festival of this magnitude.
Vedder said at the beginning of Pearl Jam’s set that because he’d received so many gifts during his three days at the festival, he felt obligated to do his best to give something back in return.
Pearl Jam drew from their nearly two decades of discography to keep the beaten, mud-caked crowd on its feet and away from the horror within which those feet were planted.
Ben Harper and Perry Farrell were among special guests who joined Pearl Jam during a half hour of encores.
Pearl Jam, Flogging Molly, Michael Franti and Spearhead, The Walkmen, Arctic Monkeys and White Lies stood out this weekend.
Friday provided the finest weather this eight-year-old festival has ever seen grass laid just after last year’s event. The result was positively pastoral.
But then came the rain. Then came the realization that the very green practice of using sewage to fertilize the grass also created the very repellant realization that the mud 65,000 fans wallowed in was at least partially poop.
As I walked out of the festival, the giant Exit sign above me, Pearl Jam was just finishing their final number, a cover of Neil Young’s “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World.”
Sometimes to do that, you have to slog through a little manure sauce.
See you next year.
Austin City Limits Music Festival: Day 2
Mother Nature struck back with a vengeance on day two of the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
Twenty-four hours the best weather this festival has ever featured, rain plagued the entire day.
But that didn’t keep fans from showing up in droves or stop the bands from delivering more outstanding music.
Less than a day after Kings of Leon put on a show that not only lacked volume but showmanship, Flogging Molly put on a show that the young Folowills could learn from.
At a three-day festival, the crowd loses steam and Flogging Molly is the cure.
Sixty minutes of rude Irish folk had fans on their feet from front to back. People who wouldn’t know Ireland from Scotland danced figure-eights around each other. Near the stage the rain made a mosh pit unavoidable. But it was kindly, brotherly mosh pit. A few brave lads surfed the crowd. When moshing got to intense, the seemingly rude embraced arm-in-arm and danced a Celtic merry-go-round.
Lead singer Dave King played the crowd as expertly as he strummed his guitar and delivered his barroom-brawling vocals.
For an hour the rain was welcome. For an hour we were taken an enormous Irish Pub in Dublin.
I’ll never buy as many Flogging Molly CDs as I buy Kings of Leon CDs. But I’ve seen Kings of Leon three times now, and the only place they’ve never taken me was into their basement for a run-through of their catalog.
Neither are a bad place to escape a stressful life and maybe a rainy day.
Next time you get a chance to see Flogging Molly, and it’s they have been to Oklahoma a number of times, don’t miss it — rain or shine.
Austin City Limits: Day 1
This festival has been bedeviled by curious weather every year since I started coming back in 2005, but not today. Highs were in the mid to high 80s. As night fell, it was clearly in the low 70s.
The Walkmen, who play Meacham Auditorium tonight, performed at 3:30, delivering their usual dose of all-out performance. Just as all you can ask from your favorite sports team is that they leave it on the field, that’s what this New York-based quintet gives. Lead singer Hamilton Leithauser appeared literally at the point of self-destruction at different points throughout the show. No member leaves the stage who isn’t in a full sweat.
Kings of Leon, who play the Ford Center tonight, was easily the draw of the day — perhaps the entire festival. There is no band on the face of the planet riding more positive buzz than these Grammy-winning kinsman. The Followills, two brothers and two cousins, are nosing their way to U2 hype. With two members born in Oklahoma City, they might even be a more important act to see than Bono and the gang in a couple weeks.
While the attendance Friday was more than 60,000, it’s difficult to believe any less than 55,000 of those were anywhere but the Livestrong stage as the night came to a close. Unfortunately, some shoddy sound engineering muted the sound. Fans in the middle to the back of the stage could barely make out songs. That won’t be a problem for Ford Center fans.
Kings of Leon is brand-new to headling, and it shows. I saw them in 2006 at the Diamond Ballroom, and their style on stage hasn’t progressed much. That’s not to speak ill of it, but simply to point out that you shouldn’t go expecting a dynamic stage presence. This is a hardworking band who lets their music speak for them. Not a bad idea when your music is this good.
Kings of Leon play at the Ford Center tonight, doors open at 7. The Walkmen play at Meacham Auditorium on the OU campus at 8.
The New Rules of Reality TV
I am a fan of scripted television and here is why:
TV characters, reading from scripts, have much funnier lines than real people, stuck on an island or in a house, who don’t have scripts. And even if the real people do have scripts (I’m looking at you, “The Hills”), professional actors tend to do a better job delivering those lines.
But let’s forget how boring most reality TV is for a moment and remember instead how oppressively annoying the people on reality TV are.
I meet real people all the time and most of them are nice to be around. They’re funny or they’re serious or smart or dumb or lots of other things, but mostly, they are real. They have no big audience to lie to.
There are no real people on reality TV. They are all playing a character based on themselves (or even a character based on another character they saw once) and most of them do a poor job at it.
But that’s fine. If people still want to watch that crap and people still want to be on that crap, then let that crap go on existing, so long as I don’t have to watch it.
What I will not abide, however, is when reality TV contestants try and exist in the real world. They can be annoying on their own shows — but they need to stay away from appearing on shows that I want to watch.
Which is why I’ve come up with a couple of new rules for reality TV. I hope you will help me enforce these rules with hefty fines and heftier baseball bats.
1. As soon as you become “famous,” you can’t be on TV anymore. Jon and Kate Gosselin, the Kardashians, anybody who was on “Survivor,” you can stay on your own show, but the second you start appearing in tabloids or on “Entertainment Tonight,” your show is canceled and so is your fame. Sorry.
2. No more murderers. I’m kind of surprised this has to be a rule, but apparently nobody thought to do this before, so we’ve had a bunch of thugs and criminals on TV. You’re out.
3. If you’re a former star and have become a “reality star,” then your show at least has to be about why you were famous in the first place. Flavor Flav wants to put out a new album? Fine. Flavor Flav wants to get his G.E.D.? No way. Ideally, you’d do both of those things privately, Flav, but if you insist on being filmed, you better be making a record.
Won’t Somebody Please Think About the Children?
I don’t know about you, but I cannot stop worrying about kids. Are they eating right? Getting enough sleep? Do they know the exact number of seconds to wash their underbits so that they’re clean without starting to enjoy themselves physically?
And, most of all, are they reading? Because if they are, slap the book out of their hands! Reading is the most dangerous activity around!
It’s just like the parents in Norman told me — reading is destructive and awful. Well, they didn’t “tell” me that so much as they showed it to me by keeping author Ellen Hopkins away from their school.
After all, Hopkins wrote a book about her teen-age daughter who got hooked on meth and ruined her life. This isn’t the sort of thing for teen-agers to read about! What if those printed words about the evils of drug use somehow got into their brains, but the kids were confused and started using drugs?
Better to keep them away from all books, I think. The parents at Whittier Middle School know best. Kids who read do drugs, or something. Stick those kids in front of the TV set instead where they can learn from doctors (like on “House, M.D.”) or police officers (like on “The Shield”) about right and wrong.
In other news, I’m pretty sure the Internet is bad for you, too. And since it used to be transmitted by telephone lines, it’s a safe bet we shouldn’t use phones either. I’m not sold on houses, for that matter.
Just so we’re agreed — we’ll live in caves, not communicate, ban reading and just watch TV. That’s how you strengthen America!
