Infomocracy

"You would think, with all the access to Information, that people would pay more attention to what their governments do in other centenals, but you know what they say: you can give a voter Information, but you can't make him think."
--Malka Older, Infomocracy

In a semi-distant future, a social mega-network named Information provides the infrastructure for people to do seemingly everything, from business to play to politics. Using one of the global micro-democracy's decennial elections as a stage, author Malka Older follows a handful of political operatives and social network bureaucrats to examine the intersections of information and democracy and what humanity does at those intersections.

As a guy who loves information and people having access to that information, I find Information (a kind of Facebook-Wikipedia hybrid for everyone and everything) to be bloody fantastic. As a guy who loves privacy and the scrupulous use of information, I find Information to be bloody scary. That dichotomy is something that Older explores in Infomocracy's better touches. In an early scene, one of our lead characters, Ken, a political operative whose principles appear to be flagging, checks the personal Information of a flight attendant who has allowed some of her Information to be public. While he doesn't pick up much beyond what is public, another lead character, Mishima, an agent for Information, frequently uses her considerable skill and access to peruse Information in a way that someone like Ken would never think to. In a smaller, more personal story, where the stakes didn't have to be--literally--worldwide, there would be room for Older to explore this tension between the usefulness and creepiness of near-unlimited Information.

Such a story might also give us more time with Mishima, a fantastically drawn character who, in less-skilled hands, might've become a competence porn figure. Her hyper-competence and workaholic nature are balanced by her mistrust and paranoia, faults that she not only possesses but acknowledges (if only to herself and, later, to Ken) in a refreshing take on an old trope.

Information, like information, is neither good nor bad but can and is used for both. Its indispensability makes it both revered and distrusted, depending on which character Older is working with. It doesn't matter so much what types of information one makes available, it's who's using it. And why. With a tool so big and necessary, the micro-democracy, and therefore the world, is ripe for hi-jacking.

In an election year, you'd think--or at least I had thought--that the micro-democracy and election-hacking would be the most intriguing items. Curiously, this wasn't the case. The idea and execution of the elections were interesting, but the shadowy machinations were a bit too shadowy. It would help to know what the stakes are: who the political parties are (policies, like some characters, are sometimes only briefly outlined) and what the characters behind the conspiracies stand to gain or lose. The techno-thriller that takes up the last act of the book loses momentum because I know that I should be outraged by the scheming (and in theory, I am--election-hacking is bad) but my level of investment was not what it might have been.

Still, Older has constructed a wonderfully flawed and detailed society. And there were clearly a lot of details left on the cutting room floor, such as how the world gave itself over to the micro-democracy and how Information managed to become the conduit for that democracy (the theme of "who's really in charge here" is a nicely subtle one throughout the book). Having had experience rendering too much exposition, I appreciate Older's wisdom in not bothering to explain everything.

Indeed, she seems to want to share a lot more. By giving us a world-spanning, high-stakes, high-concept sci-fi thriller, she leaves us with the broad strokes, sacrificing some of the juicy detail that might be better provided from an on-the-ground viewpoint of someone living in the micro-democracy, under Information. More time with someone like Doumaine, an under-utilized character who is working to undermine the micro-democracy until he mostly disappears for the second half, would give us a new take on Older's society, fleshing it out. If Infomocracy has one flaw, it's that there's too much to show and too little space to do it in. But maybe that's what the sequel will be for.

Grade: A-

The Returned

This is the state I find the country in upon my return? Trump. Jon Stewart retired. Lemmy, Bowie, and Prince dead. Trump.

What were you guys doing while I was gone? Come on, I go away for just... fifty-nine weeks? Wow. That's a long time. Okay, maybe we've all been letting each other down a little.

There's a lot to catch up on, most of it stupid. But in the interest of being excellent to each other, I'm going to try for a quick wrap-up of some of the easier to digest bits from the last several months. (Not the election, though--not yet. I still can't manage to keep that down.)

Batman v Superman/DC on Film  
I gave most of my thoughts on this on the podcast. But just to sum up: Affleck was fantastic (cautious optimism pays off!), Gadot was damn-near a revelation, while Superman (and most everything else) was... Snyder-ific. I don't know how Zack Snyder got that job. More importantly, I still don't know how DC/WB subs him out for Affleck, who can bring more to a film than interesting action choreography. Your ambition to be the smarter Marvel is a perfectly fine one, DC--if you can pull it off. But thirty minutes of interesting thematic building cannot give way to a punch-fest that is pointless, devoid of character, and unjustified even within the scope of a thin story.

Zack Snyder as a child. Also as an adult.

The up-shot is that DC/WB has too much invested to pull out now, so they'll get a couple of shots to do it right. Suicide Squad later this year and Wonder Woman next year, followed by Aquaman. You can read a lot of negatives into the reshoots and the insistences that future movies will be more fun: desperation, for example. But the first step toward fixing a problem is admitting there is one. And I choose to believe that, somewhere, a tiny voice is shouting at DC/WB execs, urging them to right their ship.

Keep listening to those voices, guys. They'll serve you well. As Silby said on the podcast, Harley Quinn, you're our only hope. Luckily, she's a damn good character to hang your hopes on.

The Cubs
Last year was so much simpler. It was one of the most exciting seasons Wrigley has seen in a long, long, long time: 97 wins, the third best record in baseball, a drive to the NLCS behind a young team with a super-chill manager in his first year with the club. It didn't even matter that they didn't pull it out in the end because they weren't even supposed to have gotten that far. Not that soon, anyway. Then they had that so-unbelievable-it-became-funny winter. And now this year...

Yes, it's exciting as hell, I know. But I could do without the talk of how historic the 2016 Cubs have been to this point. I could do without the expectations. And the heart palpitations. It's only May. I know this franchise. I know that if any team could win 120 games with a run differential of +400 and then get swept in the NLDS, it's this one. It's only May. There's a lot of baseball left to play... too much.

I still have hope, of course. Always will. And this team has more than earned that hope (that they've struggled the last few weeks against bad teams while beating up on the good ones helps remind me that underneath it all, they're still the Cubbies). But I've been on this ride before--and I'm not sure that I've ever seen it go this fast. Because their ticket for October might already be punched...

And it's only May.

America Beer
Okay, now we need to talk about something that is deeply stupid. Something that is deeply insulting. Something that will be with us at least until November. You think I'm going to make a joke about the election here, don't you? I'm not. There'll be time for that later. Anyway, this is probably worse.

What the hell, Anheuser-Busch In-Bev?! No, shut up a minute. I don't actually care--that was rhetorical. Stop it. Just stop... everything. Ideally, everything you do would just stop but I'll settle for you not wrapping your iced stormwater runoff in a flag that's already had too much done to it in the last few months.

Used to be, they'd settle for slapping some stars and stripes to the can or bottle some time between Memorial Day and the Fourth (a lot of breweries have long done this, even some very good ones). That was fine, it was subtle. It didn't have to mean anything. But this country doesn't do subtle anymore. This time, they've dragged the very name into the slop, affixing the word right on the can: America. It can't be ignored anymore.

If a person walks into a bar and orders "an America," a thoughtful bartender will slide a ridiculously large glass of bourbon their way and all would be well. If the thought occurred to make the request a beer, I don't know, maybe something that's still American-owned, that takes chances and doesn't try to please everybody? Isn't that how we like to see ourselves? There are a lot of good options in that direction. But if the person orders "an America" and is expecting a Budweiser (he (and it'll be a he) will be wearing some combination of a visor, aviators, a polo shirt, and a smirk that says he knows what he's doing is pissing people off, but otherwise why get up in the morning?), a thoughtful bartender will shut the establishment down until the bar patrons and wider community can overcome the douche-chill shockwave.

There's an easy line here about me loving America more than In-Bev does. I mean, I do. Most everybody does; it's a low bar. That a Belgian company would use the name "America" to enhance the already-bloated brand of a watered-down slap in the face to Bavarian/Czech tradition probably says more about early 21st Century geopolitics than I'm capable of parsing. But, like Trump, it's not the fountainhead that concerns me: it's the people who will lap it up, ensuring we'll be dealing with this again next year. And the year after. Until "America" replaces "Budweiser" entirely and we'll all look at ourselves, not quite sure when we hitched our star to the wrong wagon, but picking up on the unshakable sense that alcohol had something to do with it.

It's good to be back, everybody.

The Simpsons' Warm Glowing Warming Glow

Or, Dental Plan; Simpsons Fans Need Their Fix.

Some credit is due to whoever was honest enough to tell us that 24-hour Simpsons access will inevitably be bad for our (until now) functioning civilization, leaving us all little choice but to crack each others' heads open and feast on the goo inside. I'd like to say that mainlining Simpsons episodes and being relatively productive in life are not mutually exclusive aims. But, then, I have over twenty years of experience. You might say that I am horrifyingly qualified to thrive in a world in which a Simpsons episode is playing somewhere in the background at all times. But it may be a rough transition for many others.

Simpsons World would come as happier news if over half of the show's now 552 episodes weren't coming from the bleak, post-Golden Age era. But that's a criticism you probably saw coming. Let's try again: those of us who grew up with the show, have seen every episode at least four times, and have the DVD box sets are the ones who'll be most grateful for such a thing. We're also the last people who need it. We can already run entire episodes in our heads and conjure memories of any scene for any reason no reason at all.

Somewhere, there are people sorely in need of this service (I still get sad when someone tells me they weren't allowed to watch The Simpsons as a kid--how do you even have conversations?). But they've had ample time to seek out the show and it seems unlikely to me that Simpsons World will finally make them do it. Maybe if it were bought up by Netflix or Amazon Prime, but even then...

Now, I need to be careful about how I use the first person plural here because I'm not sure to how many people this applies. The Internet makes our numbers appear larger than they are. But conversely, polite company makes us seem fewer than we are. However, there are at least several of us out there. Those of us who were raised by the show; who can quote whole episodes backward and forward; and can peg any freeze frame to a specific episode, naming the proper title of the episode and the season will be the ones embiggening ourselves through this cromulent new service (at one time, I could rattle off a few episode production codes; that's not bragging, it's just a sad, sad fact).

Essentially, Simpsons World acts as a specialized content provider, giving users every episode, along with clips, playlists, etc. Viewers can even construct their own playlists and have episodes and clips suggested for them. Meanwhile, FXX (the availability of which will, like Simpsons World, be dependent on one's cable provider having a deal with the original FX), will have broadcast rights for all episodes, and will likely air lengthier marathons in sync with new episodes being broadcast over on Fox--if an upcoming episode revolves around Krusty, for example, FXX will air a bunch of old Krusty episodes, reminding viewers of a time when they loved Krusty. In celebration of this arrangement, FXX will be running a twelve-day marathon of all 552 episodes.

So, for the cost of also having FXX grafted onto our cable packages (we still need the bundles in order to watch things, apparently), it almost seems more trouble than it's worth. Especially if, as stated, we're prepared to cling to our box sets until physical media dies. However, the playlists might make this thing worth it on their own. Many of us already have themed marathons in our heads; Simpsons World will just make them easier to construct for ourselves and others to watch. That said, I'm not sure what Simpsons fan needs recommendations.

The twelve-day marathon is intriguing, but is really nothing more than an extended version of what Simpsons fans have been doing themselves since the olden days. In those days, "binging" was called "marathoning" and nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. In college, I myself once marathoned season three all the way through solely because I was bored and had no girlfriend; that may have been kind of a chicken-and-the-egg situation. And, anyway, would it be worth sticking around much beyond day three or four, if the episodes are run chronologically? Yes, there's the easy knock again. Sorry, it's a reflex.

But that reflex may prove a point: we can't let it go. The show has entwined itself with our DNA, changing us, like when you stand next to a microwave for too long (I don't know how microwaves work). The show is a part of the way we think and a part of the way we engage with the world. And for the same reason that we can't reflect on either old or new episodes without reflexively adding "too bad the new episodes suck" we cannot turn down Simpsons swag, in whatever form it presents itself. Like moths to flame. Or Lisa to the Corey hotline. So we don't need Simpsons World. But damned if we won't use it.

It's a canny move for a fledgling network (which itself seems wholly unnecessary, but I suppose FX needs more time to show movies with director's commentary). They know we can't won't turn away. Why, once we no longer have to get up to change the discs, it won't be long before we're washing ourselves with rags on sticks.

Read This And Get a Free Thing

A few quick items, while they're on my brain.

• I reviewed Doorman's pilot a while back. I said at the time that I hoped you could watch it one day. Well, now you can. It's here and it's good and it's ten minutes long. Come on, you don't have ten minutes? You have ten minutes. 
• In my bookmarks tab, I have a subfolder marked "Blog material." I've touched that subfolder probably twice since last April. On my more recent visit, I rediscovered the (increasingly popular) webcomic Strong Female Protagonist. It's one of the more interesting takes on superherodom going anywhere in fiction right now. The dialogue gets a little heavy-handed and moralizing, but I'm not in a position to criticize someone else on that point, am I? 
• Oh right, this is where I tell you to get your copy of Nos Populus. And then you can like it on Facebook. You know, if you want. No pressure.
• Back in September, I predicted a Denver-Seattle Super Bowl. I probably shouldn't get to brag about that, but this is the first time to my memory that I've successfully predicted both Super Bowl teams. Basically, I'm now qualified to be a sportsball expert guy. I should learn how to get paid for this. Anyway, most would stick with their guns, but I have no faith in my guns. Adjusting my previous pick, I'm calling: Seattle over Denver, 28-20.

So, that's it for now. Your free thing? I just gave you several. Were you expecting a car? That was never realistic. Part of you knew that, didn't it? But you had stuck with your fanciful dream. And now we're both unhappy.

#Doorman Rises

Doorman (who you might remember from here) has spent the last few months working on a web series based on his tragicomic travails in the world of Doorman-ing. With a ferocious desire to escape his shit-tastic job and some generous Internet investment, he's recently wrapped on a pilot for the series. The trailer for that pilot is here, and it's pretty exciting.

I'm not totally sure what's next (ask him yourself), but I imagine it's film festivals, hype, a ten-episode deal with Netflix, coke orgies, a phase of being absolutely intolerable, burnout, back to Doorman-ing, and finally redemption.

Seriously: I'm ecstatic to see any talented and driven writer use their craft to lift themselves from the Everyday. We all need that reinforcement every now and again.

Cheers, Doorman.

Goodbye, Mr. Destructo?

Mobutu Sese Soku was the CIA-backed President of Zaire from 1965 until 1997. Given his sponsors, his stomping grounds, and the length of his rule, you've probably already guessed that he was a sociopathic, murderous dictator, installed to keep the Commies at bay in central Africa.

A very different Mobutu Sese Soku was, until recently, a blogger of no mean repute, running the often great, occasionally transcendent, Et Tu, Mr. Destructo? before being raptured into the enviable air of Gawker, where he was billed as "America's Screaming Conscience."  He also boasted one of the funnier Twitter feeds that ever I did follow.

"I'M GONNA FUCK YOU UP, CHIEF!" — Joe Biden eating fistfuls of bbq Fritos from a BIG GRAB bag tucked by his crotch, watching Paul Ryan on TV
— Mobutu Sese Seko (@Mobute) August 11, 2012

I started reading Mobutu some time during his pre-Gawker days, when having my own blog still seemed to me like a waste of time. His almost free-form rants, routed in equal parts anger and semi-ironic detachment, were a strong sign that the spirit of Bill Hicks remains intact some place. He possessed a strong rotation of topics ranging from politics to sports to literature, and was armed with a reference window that would make Dennis Miller blush, if he were capable of shame. In my more self-conscious moments, I imagine Mobutu's voice tearing into my weaker posts, Something Awful-style, and I know I have to do better.

So his last piece for Gawker, in which he reveals himself as the mostly anonymous "Jeb Lund" and writes at gut-wrenching length about the damage the Internet can do to a person who deserves bad and receives worse, hit me pretty hard. In part because having this mystery lifted feels even more disruptive than the time my Sunday School teacher causally mentioned that there is no Santa Claus (not gonna lie, I always pictured him being black; Mobute and Santa, I mean). And in part for the very intimate reminder of what a terrible place the Internet can be. Mobute was forged in the fires of the Internet's most pitiless subforums and paid the price for his shenanigans there. His readers were generally unaware of that price, merely enjoying the caramelized fruits of what remained. Until yesterday. That's a reminder we could all use more often.

But I'm not so pained over the loss of his work, because we won't. This isn't the end for Lund's writing, it appears. Just of Mobute's. And, with luck, the start of something new for Lund. At the very least, Internet willing, we'll always have his archives.

Cheers, Mobute.

One Week Till Christmas

Kids like Snoopy. They might like Woodstock, too, I don't know. But they definitely dig Snoopy. More so than they do Charlie Brown, who, analyzed as the ostensible child that he is, always seems soaked in a self-pity that keeps him ever at a distance, however much we might want to relate to him. Or Linus, a savant who swaps back and forth between eloquent wunderkind and eminent pushover. Lucy's just a bitch. No, the World War I Flying Ace was always more relateable to a seven-year-old Half-Drunken Scribe than the rest of the gang ever was.

The staying power of Peanuts has always been its nostalgia, fueled by adults who strongly identify with Charlie Brown's myriad plights of conscience. Christmas is one week away, and while the smaller, Snoopy-liking version of myself would be ready to burst at the seams, adult-ish me frets and stresses over all that must be done in the meantime and all that will have to be done afterward. Kids don't have an after-Christmas. There is no after-Christmas for them. School just sort of starts up again. But adults have pre-Christmas, Christmas, and post-Christmas. And while our yuletide responsibilities change rapidly, our expectations are much slower to adapt.

At the risk of invoking White People Problems, I, like Charlie Brown (always full-named, by the way, never "Charlie;" Peppermint Patty calls him "Chuck," of course, but that's the joke... I think), can't help but wonder how much of it is worth it. How much should be scaled back, just so the holiday can have a chance to meet expectations without killing us. Because Christmas is a perfectly fine holiday. There's just too much baggage (sometimes literally).

And I don't even have kids.

Anyway, here's Linus' from-memory recital of Scripture, overdubbed with Orson Welles' "cuckoo clock" speech from The Third Man. Crude? Maybe. Childhood wounding? Definitely. Briefly funny? Oh yes. And in the end, isn't that what the holidays are about?

Probably not, no.

Bad Roommate

I've linked to Doorman before. But do yourself a favor and check out his real life, three part tale of roommate fuckery in Manhattan, featuring Smuttynose beer, rash decisions, legal threats, and Vitamin Water bottles filled with cigarette butts. It's the fizzle-out stories that are the most haunting, I think; they run counter to our conditioned expectation of the climatic encounter that's supposed to close every plot. When we don't get that encounter, it sticks with us.

Read Doorman's story. And, if you have a good roommate, find them, pull them close to you, and whisper into their ear that you are prepared to die for them, while softly hushing their protests of confusion.

At Least He Has Good Form

Because I can't accurately title this post "I'm Impressed With This Guy's Balls."

If asked to sum up American University in one anecdote, I would choose the moment during my Junior year when an anonymous young man decided he was going to streak across the quad. But not wanting to appear too immodest, he chose to hold a plastic bag over himself. An unfortunate choice because, as you may be aware, a plastic bag does not make for an especially reliable shield and a gentle breeze easily laid waste to the poor bloke's careful planning. Minutes later, I filed into my next class whereupon I observed one of my fellow students (straight-laced, College Republican, destined-to-run-for-president type (which, it cannot be repeated enough, happens a lot at AU)) dramatically shaking his head over having seen "everything." The brave soul somehow managed to soldier on through class.

I suppose that the current controversy my alma mater finds itself embroiled in is another pretty good example of AU-ness. But I honestly can't make myself care about that one way or the other.

Half-Drunken Blog Love

This post is just a blogger expressing his platonic love for some other bloggers.  Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

The Rude Pundit has been running one of the web's best liberal blogs for nearly nine years now.  His was the first blog I read even semi-regularly.  Somewhere in an alternate universe, where I'm a much more talented blogger, I'm still not as good as him.  His recent post about Mittens' campaign contains one of the most apt descriptions of the man's baffling lack of person-ability I've ever read:

Mitt Romney is not only not someone you'd want to have a beer with, but he's someone who, given the right circumstances and the right bar, you'd want to punch in the nose for being such a self-righteous cock.

The Doorman is one I've come across more recently, when he friended me on Facebook and started following me on Twitter as a kind of comedian-networking thing.  Not the sort of thing I usually go in for, but his work is funny and insightful enough (not to mention focused--what I would give for that kind of a consistency to my topics) to make it worth my while not to decline.  Declining a friend request, by the way, is a completely acceptable response to getting such a request from someone you don't know (wanting to decline someone you do know is another matter entirely).  This is not what someone recently did to the Doorman, who has now been blocked from friending anyone for thirty days.  So, you know: fuck you, guy who ratted to Zuckerberg. 

While I'm throwing blogs at you, you've probably seen Glove and Boots.  It's mostly dedicated to hyping their videos, so cut out the middle man and check out their YouTube page.  G+B is basically what Jim Henson would've been if he'd had the nerve to be balls-to-the-wall funny instead of safe and politely funny.  

Lastly, a friend of mine bakes some pretty goddamn delicious desserts--particularly the truffles.  She blogs about said desserts here sometimes. What's that, you think that truffles are gay?  First: no, in point of fact, they're not.  Second, even if they could be, so what?  They taste great.  Third: fuck you again, guy who I can only assume is the same douche who ratted on the Doorman.  Really, who else would be such a douche?  

D.C.: On The Other Hand...

A few months ago, as part of Andrew Sullivan's "Ask Anything" series, Wired writer/blogger Spencer Ackerman had all of this to say about Beltway culture:

I try to refrain from effusive praise and don't know where to start with this, anyway, so I won't say much.  From the pointed differentiation between "Beltway culture" and "D.C. culture," to the way people from the culture--whether themselves guilty or not--are never allowed to escape the image, Ackerman gets it done nearly flawlessly (I forgive the brief sidequest into "suck my New York dick" territory as a matter of policy, because that's a disease for which science has not yet discovered a cure).  It's so satisfying and bang-on that it nearly makes me rethink my stance on D.C. Statehood. 

And it was apparently off the cuff.  For something that was planned out (though perhaps not as viscerally pleasing), see the excerpt from Nos Populus about Washington. 

Someone Crossed the Streams

That's from the Mitt, Venn and Now Tumblr.  More context about the Romney Campaign's ill-considered use of Venn diagrams here. 

I suppose, if I had to nitpick, that I could argue about how Batman doesn't hide from his dark and mysterious past so much as he strives to overcome it and keep others from suffering the same fat.  And the Joker's past is so mysterious, even to him, that there's actually not much to hide from.  But it's Friday and it's too hot for that.

Life In Hell

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
-- Matt Groening

Matt Groening ended his Life in Hell last week.

No, wait.  Sorry.  He ended his long-running comic strip Life in Hell last week.  I never read a lot of the strip, outside of the stuff I found in the collected editions in the kind of bookstores that never would've sold LIH had its creator not also been the co-creator of The Simpsons.  Indeed, if not for The Simpsons, I never would've known about it at all.  I was raised too far away (in both time and space) from the epicenters of the alt-weeklies that provided an understanding home for Binky, Bongo, Sheba, and Akbar and Jeff.  Even if I had been an adolescent/early-adult in the eighties in a town like Chicago or Seattle or L.A., I still probably wouldn't have been with-it enough to delve into them much.  Unless perhaps I stumbled upon them in some dusty comic book shop.  But who knows how long I would've stuck with them without a regular, pointed fix?  It's only now, as the age of those physical stores passes, that huge numbers of us are able to absorb this kind of darkly incisive and borderline subversive work as easily as we do (time and space are not excuses anymore).  And let us not forget how lucky we are for that. 

That's the beauty of the Internet, satisfying niches with large enough demand to make them shine for a brief, effervescent moment but are so small as to be unappealing to the publishers and producers that ran an ancient media era (and tenuously cling to their control still) and would therefore have hardly existed.  Life in Hell would go over just as well today as a web-comic as it did in the alt-weeklies 34 years ago.  The Oatmeals and the XKCDs that owe no small credit to Groening's sensibilities and influences would be endlessly compared to LIH, sometimes positively, sometimes not.  But LIH was accessible only to a few and at that time, that meant a kind of quality control you would never expect from mass-seen works, even if you sometimes got it.  If James L. Brooks hadn't been living and working in L.A. in the eighties (though I'm not sure where else an acclaimed film producer would be living), he probably never would have seen LIH.  In which case, he never would've called Groening in to pitch a TV show.  And without that pitch, we never would have gotten LIH's greatest legacy: the institution to which modern television and Internet humor in general owe their greatest debts. 

I have a lot to say about The Simpsons.  No, really, a lot.  That formless, word dump of a post about a hypothetical Justice League movie?  That was nothing compared to what I could write about the show that partly raised me (the first Tracy Ullman shorts aired just months after I was born).  There are very few topics you can throw at me that I can't somehow relate to one Simpsons moment or another.  I've established close, long-lasting friendships on an initial foundation of Simpsons quote-fests. The Golden Age--that's seasons 4 through 8--still informs sizable chunks of my philosophies on politics, religion, morality, writing, comedy, pop culture, and loads of other things I probably don't even realize.  And it's sad decline over the last decade-plus taught me the pitfalls of hero-worship and (along with the Cubs) how to love something while not letting that thing wholly define me, how to accept the imperfection of the things I love.  That probably sounds sad to people who weren't raised on The Simpsons.  And that's fine.  I'm sure whatever icon they were raised on is almost as good as mine. 

Those are thoughts better saved for their own post or posts.  There will always be more time for a show that's primed to go for a few seasons more, making for a psychologically satisfying 25... and no end in sight.  That's nine fewer than LIH had in its run.  I suppose that's something to think about, when I complain about how long The Simpsons has stretched itself.  But if I thought that the final episode of The Simpsons could buck the trend of the last ten seasons or so and be as true (and, therefore, poignant) to its original incarnation as the last edition of LIH was, then I probably wouldn't have a lot of reason to complain.

Scott Meets Family Circus

It's days like today that I really miss Scott Meets Family Circus.  Nothing especially rough or meaningful has happened to me today, but I get these pangs every so often.  In times of plenty or in times of want, there's always something satisfying about seeing a bland, undeserving American icon get shat upon.  Not broken down and analyzed, or even sliced apart, as with a rapier--that would be boring and useless--but mercilessly beaten, as with a sledgehammer, for little reason other than because it's so easy. 

From September 2008 to August 2011, Scott irregularly but hilariously harassed The Family Circus family.  It didn't matter that they could never fight back.  If anything, it probably helped--their passivity was a natural partner for their banal exploits and inoffensive observations.  Scott was an anarchic force so alien and unknowable to the family--and yet inevitable--that his presence was that of an emotional and psychological tornado.  He may not directly hit every character on a given pass, but he'll have touched someone or something they cared about.  And he'd be coming back.  He was a dose of hyper-reality, crashing into an ever-unchanging universe, exposing The Family Circus' personal hell of being incapable of expressing real thoughts about real situations.  Aside from the ill-advised and brief existence of Dante, a side story that showed hints of promise but was never right for the format, Scott was a freight train running full bore into the complacent family, forcing them to confront the real world and their reactions to it in whatever feeble way they could manage.  In that way, Scott was the invaluable dramatic element that the family never knew they needed, and could never be done without again.  Even if they might've preferred to. 

I know nothing about Scott Gairdner, that creepy-looking weirdo with the penchant for intimidating and belittling cartoon pre-kindergartners before banging their mother.  I don't know what his circumstances are or why he hasn't posted anything in almost nine months.  It seems probable that the death of creator Bil Keane in November lightened Scott's heart and he decided to quit, or at least go on hiatus (even though the strip continues with Keane's son at the helm).  I hope it's not a lack of inspiration or decline of interest on his part, though these things do happen.  But wherever you are, here's to you, Scott, you magnificent bastard. 

The Internet is Wonderful

Because this doesn't work anywhere else.  You can already envision the seven-minute opening SNL sketch, can't you?  Now, at which minute do you think the joke would play itself out, with or without Darrell Hammond's Clinton?  Even The Daily Show and Colbert--usually excelling at these little bits of cleverness regarding fleeting moments--would have to sandwich it between a bunch of other jokes that all have a slightly better than even chance of working and you may or may not remember it the next morning.

But on here, a simple--if hilarious--image and some clear text to amplify it and you have a runaway hit built for the gypsy moth-memory news cycle.  In three weeks, the Secret Service scandal, like the GSA spending thing, will be played out.  Boring.  Even George Zimmerman isn't getting the time he used to and he killed a guy.  Some will try to keep it going longer, and attempt to tie the scandals to Obama (who might have the best facepalm in national politics).  But these seem unlikely to stick, at least to him.  The man's untouchablility in and of itself is probably worth a post, but this election has another six and a half months to go (yes, really) and hell if I feel like talking politics tonight.  So when Republicans realize this ain't good election fodder, they'll move onto the next stupid thing. 

This is why we have moments like the above image.  Everyone has their one guffaw at this perfect moment and we move on, quietly awaiting the next.  When events and technology move as fast as they do today, our cultural moments have to happen just as quickly.  The Hunger Games movie's monster opening weekend was just a few weeks back and we're all already getting hard over The Avengers' release in a couple of weeks.  After that, it'll be The Dark Knight Rises and then The Hobbit and then Christmas will be in there, maybe.*  Texts From Hillary worked because of that one picture someone happened to snap and then it ended with a perfect crescendo; it lasted one week and was never allowed to get stale.  Twitter allows a few brilliant snippets and insights to flourish for all the world to see for a brief period of time; thoughts that would've been said aloud to the family dog and then dying before hitting the floor.  YouTube brings sneezing pandas and other cultural icons into our homes at speeds that would terrify previous generations, moving on before the next meme hits.  Tumblr gives us glimpses into bizarre trends from a half a world away that we'd never have gotten--or cared about--in the prior media age. 

Most of you are probably thinking that these outlets also highlight some of the worst of humanity.  Well, yes.  You don't have to tell me.  Lolcatz, Lemon Party, Newsmax.  None of that shit would have been allowed to infect people's eyeballs once upon a time.  And, yes, I'm aware that this cultural ADD and increased openness is also responsible for all that makes the Internet terrible, as well as wonderful.  And the loss of artistic and cultural permanence in all of this is something I may have a small stake in, myself.  That same wit I was just praising won't be remembered the way (is Oscar Wilde too obvious?) Oscar Wilde still is a century after his death.  So there'll be plenty more posts on that in the future.  For balance.

But for now, let's bask in one of those great little moments the Tubes occasionally deign to allow us.  Heh, Clinton. 

*For those who know me, yes, I'm already excited for The Dark Knight Rises and will be well into the winter movie season and likely long after.  But that's more of a chronic Batman fetish on my part and not to be confused with our larger cultural fickleness.