KaBooM

My thoughts on HBO’s Girls

Definitely going to add to the flood of internet talk on the subject, just because I feel like getting some of this stuff down, and also because I have to write a paper and I don’t want to do it!

So I watched and generally enjoyed the first episode.  I’m very happy a show like “Girls” exists, it’s run by a lot of young women, who are very talented and smart.  They are really interesting and honest models for young people, and are a better glimpse of reality than anything else offered on television.  I’m glad that there’s a place for a work that is clearly made with such care and attention.  It’s really great to see a project like this in the world…but I don’t know if I like it.

What I do know is that I definitely did not like it as much as I thought I was going to like it.    But chalk that up to my too-high expectations.  I thought about it a bit more, and I think a big problem is with my approach to the show.  I’m not a Sex and the City girl, I like lo-fi comedy, I like reality, I like a bit of grit in the works.  I approached Girls as a sort of anti-Sex and the City-thinking that if it’s anti-SATC it’ll be exactly like me.  I assumed that Girls would be representing my experiences in the city, or as close as television could get to that.  I am a 20-something living in New York, I have jobs, I take classes.  Consequently, I formed the equation in my mind that Girls would be just like me, and it’s not. It’s really really not like me.  And I just feel my own reaction to it, my own enjoyment of the show, was initially affected by that perceived disconnect.  

I wanted Girls to represent everything that I am, and it didn’t do that.  But that doesn’t mean that it’s bad, because it is a really high-quality show, and I hope that I grow to like it, and get past my initial reactions.  I guess I just wanted to state my issues.

The other big issue I have with Girls is the money.  I know, I know.  It’s a television show, why care so much?  But their relationship with money literally makes me angry, I just want to yell at the screen and lecture them, I mean two YEARS(!!!) of their parents paying for them?  WHAT?  That blows my mind, and makes me jealous.  I mean, I worked at a part-time job since I was in middle school, I worked full time in the summers, 40 hours a week since I was a junior in high school.  Maybe I took a weeks vacation, maybe.  This current semester is the first that I haven’t worked part-time during.  At first I itched at the free time, but I loaded up on extra classes and volunteer work, and I’ve started sending out grant applications, scholarship stuff etc.  I work hard.  And I know I’ll have to work hard for the rest of my life, money and stuff like that doesn’t come easy, not for me, not for my family.  And seeing that easy disregard for money just makes me want to yell.

Yeah, so those are my thoughts on Girls, I’m definitely going to keep watching, I think it might be a show that will benefit from repeat watches, I hope I grow to like it even more, and overcome my own issues in viewership, haha.   

Random thoughts of the week:  Excited as always for The Chris Gethard Show this week, except I guess it’s the Hintmaster Show this time!  It’s my new favorite thing, and I love being able to go to see it live every week.  It feels like a secret, it feels fun, it feels welcoming, and it’s the best.  I secretly want to be the next Random (or a Random).  I want to be part of the mythology of the show, haha.  Literally my favorite part of every week is heading to that show, hanging out with all the crazies, and taking a taxi home through the city at night.  It’s the best.

I got an internship!  (And it’s paid, haha, back to the money as always).  I’m going to be at MacMillan, working with two children’s imprints.  This means I get to stay in the city for the summer, and I’m absolutely ecstatic.  Really.  I just did not want to spend the summer trapped in my small little CT town, working at the same old job, with the same old people.  Also, I get to keep going to TCGS!!! Yep, that’s a factor in my excitement.

I’m going to get back to homework etc. now.

I hope to post more soon!

kbm 

The Possibility of Normal

I was in class today, spacing out, with my two notebooks out, one for regular class notes, the other for thoughts, asides, and diary-like writings.  I got caught up in a digression pretty fast in the midst of listening to my professor and classmates talk about “The Duchess of Malfi.”  

First we started talking about the characters, and the level of truth within them, truth to themselves, and truth in appearance.  This led to a discussion of the Cardinal, whose actions are pretty much antithetical to a typical religious leader.  I stated that he was a man of the people.

This simple phrase “man of the people” took me straight back to the You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes podcast, and his hilarious interview with Nick Kroll.  This is because they explained that Nick Kroll has a coat they call his “man of the people” coat, listen to the episode if you want to hear exactly how it played out, but it’s pretty darn funny.  

Then I thought about the podcast more, and the comedy I’ve been gravitating towards lately, which is a blend of weird, honest, hilarious, and real.  You Made it Weird and The Chris Gethard Show have been the two things, besides Game of Thrones of course, that I’ve been obsessing about lately.  This is because they are forums for honest discussion, where people don’t hide their flaws, they don’t pretend to be normal, they reveal their narcissism, their family problems, their irrational fears and idiosyncracies.  These shows tear down an assumption I’ve held for too long, that there’s such a thing as “normal.”  I think that I’ve held a sneaking suspicion that somewhere out in the world there is a family with the perfect life, with no problems, and somehow that is “normal.”  But hearing the stories through these shows reminds me that it’s okay that my life can sometimes be crazy, weird, messed up, because there’s no such thing as that perfect life.  

Then I thought how “there’s no such thing as normal” felt like a good story title, or a Sarah Dessen style insight.  I wrote in my notebook:  You’re told you’re supposed to believe in this idea of the world as if there’s some standard you have to live up to, or that there’s some perfection you are just consistently failing to reach, but there’s just not.  There’s no such thing as normal.  So you need to stop striving for it and start striving for happiness instead.

A good fit for a story would be like a kid waiting to go home from school.  You get caught up in that contradiction, in desperately wanting to leave, but also not wanting to go anywhere near home.  It could come out of conversation between the leftover kids, hanging out, struggling with their ideas of rightness, normality, happiness, and belonging.  Yeah.  So this was a post.

Another bit of “genius” from my notebook (also I’m way heavy on the quotes today) was musing on my ideology for working hard these days, and the problems with that.  I feel like I think Work really hard, but remember that it doesn’t happen to everyone.  Or at least that’s what successful people tell you.  So it’s that conflict between go for it, but don’t go too hard?  Don’t bet everything on it?  I do’t know.  I struggle with that drive, to go for what I really want, to work for what I really want to do, when there’s that gaping hole of a future in front of me.  

But we’ll see.  I’ve felt silly that I want more validation for my work, a sense that I have a shot, that my work has promise, that people believe in me.  Maybe I hide my work too much, maybe I show it off before it’s ready, maybe I waste my ideas on this silly tumblr. I need that sense of constant possibility to fuel my work.  There just aren’t any rules anymore, there aren’t guaranteed results.  I’m too used to institutions and schools, grades and feedback, that structured validation that supports my work.  When I shoot for a career I lose that consistent response that might drive me to work harder.  

This has gotten pretty strange, but that’s enough for now.  I’m getting back to reading another essay on Beckett’s Endgame, certainly one of the strangest plays I’ve ever read, but one that makes me want to write more plays!

Hope to update this blog more soon,

thanks for reading,

kbm

Dreams

No, this isn’t going to be a word-for-word description of my dream last night, because I didn’t have one, and those things are horrifically boring to all listeners.  This is only going to be a short update/recommendation.

I’ve been reading a lot of radio plays from the 1930s in my Theater After Film class, they’re pretty fascinating, but the one I can’t stop thinking about is Dreams by Gunter Eich.  I would highly recommend seeking it out, the text may be available online somewhere, or floating around in a library.  It’s lyrical, comic, scary, weird, uplifting, angry, and political all at once.  It seemed like some kind of precursor to The Twilight Zone that wasn’t necessarily overwrought (or overacted…don’t worry I still love Rod Serling).  It struck a chord with me, and I was smiling constantly while reading it, or going over the work, it hit me like a punch in the gut.  Eich intercuts the five dreams with bits of strange poetry, to make this odd but beautiful compilation.  I’ll post the last stanza here, because it’s great:

“No, do not sleep while the arrangers of the world are busy!

Mistrust the power they say they need to acquire for your sake!

Make sure your hearts are not empty

when they are counting on the emptiness of your hearts!

Do what is not necessary,

sing the songs they do not expect to hear from your lips!

Be troublesome, be sand, not oil in the gears of the world!”

So yeah.  I haven’t had the urge to post any inspirational quotes in a while (because also, who likes that?), but that one just gets right in there.  It feels like something I’ll want to reread constantly, not just that quote, but the whole work.  

Thanks for reading,

kbm

Super Tuesday

I wrote this up for my comedy class, it’s supposed to be a Maureen Dowd-like semi-comedic political essay.  I was originally going to write a polemic about the term feminist, but I couldn’t really get solid or interesting thoughts that were original or necessarily important.  So I wrote about Mitt Romney and Super Tuesday.  Hope you like it, and as always, thanks for reading.

3/6/12

Super Tuesday and the Romney Question 

After the super saturation of not only the twenty-four hour news cycle but also the flood of candidates and campaigns, the question on every sane person’s lips seems to be: is it over yet? Sadly I must report that the answer is no.  The American people are still in the midst of the whirlwind adventure of the thank-god-it’s-only-every-four-years primary and caucus season.  But on March 6, 2012, we have finally reached the day, Super Tuesday, the possible answer to our cries for help.  This year we contend with the results of seven state primaries, and three state caucuses that will hopefully push popular support behind a single candidate.    

This is the big night, the supposed breaking point for Republican Presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich.  This is the night that should finally give definitive support to a candidate, revealing some proof of a frontrunner.  The results from these ten states, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Vermont, Virginia, Tennessee, North Dakota, and Alaska, could shake up the campaign trail, and hopefully shake out the losers.  Reports from the Gingrich campaign revealed that a loss in Georgia, his home state, would have been a major blow to his campaign, possibly forcing him to finally withdraw.  Gingrich did indeed hold strong in his home state, but little elsewhere.  Will these definitive losses finally convince himself of his failure, or will he continue to blunder through the campaign trail dragging Botox-Barbie Callista along with him?

This race though, unlucky and muddled as it has been, has continued to splinter through Super Tuesday.  The final state results, include a push of begrudging support for professional “normal” person Mitt Romney, but also a continued surge for the Satan-hating, I’m-too-Catholic-for-you Rick Santorum.  Romney walked away with five definitive victories, a recount-level battle in Ohio, resulting in a one-percentage point win over Santorum, and solid showings in second place in all of his losses.  Santorum took three states, and strong percentages despite other losses. 

The Romney group can finally heave a sigh of relief that the results weren’t split any further, and they can claim a clear majority.  Romney’s desperation for a two-man race has been clear for months, but his G.O.P. opponents simply won’t fade into memory.  The Republican race has been a consistent shamble towards the end goal of simply outlasting the other remaining candidates.  The problem of this race seems to be a clear lack of passion, for both voters and candidates.  There is a level of passion within Santorum that reveals itself in alienating extremisms that can be appealing to voters, but that amount of crazy hopefully will never reach an actual nomination.  The Robotic-Romney is unemotional, and unrelatable, and in wins and losses can’t seem to muster the emotional connection Obama can command with a smile and a wink. 

Further, Romney has to muster this passive tightly withheld anger in order to remain inoffensive, shackling himself to the medium of normal within the remaining candidates.  But this passivity feels false and empty, even dishonest to a certain extent.  Voters and viewers aren’t convinced by Romney’s show, he seems too much like he’s acting the part, rather than revealing his personality and individualism that would reveal him as human.  This is clear in Romney’s response to the Sandra Fluke kerfuffle, which he avoided for as long as possible, until finally relenting with barely a rebuke towards the offender Rush Limbaugh, stating “[that was] not the language I would have used.”  Romney cannot offend Limbaugh, a man with an influential platform, but neither can he defend the graduate student Limbaugh slandered.  Romney’s attempted inoffensiveness has somehow crossed the threshold to become offensive. 

Ultimately though, Romney’s reaction seems to be one of relief rather than celebration, declaring, “”It’s been a long road getting to Super Tuesday, let me be honest…There will be good days and bad days, always long hours and never enough time, but, on November 6th, we will stand united, not only having won an election, but having saved a future.”  There’s an amount of sheer resignation to his celebration that adds to his poor likability factor.  Despite the temporary wave of support by voters, there is no clear upswing in his likability.  The barrage of primaries and caucuses has not created the definitive single candidate for the G.O.P. and without that, no candidate can truly and emphatically claim success. 

While G.O.P candidates bite and claw their way to state majorities and minorities, President Obama speeches, laughs, and sings his way back into the hearts of American voters.  Obama’s tour of smiles has included a stop discussing sports and entertainment with Grantland Editor-in-Chief and ESPN sportswriter Bill Simmons.  And just this past week, Obama has revealed his devotion to fan-favorite television character Omar Little from the critically acclaimed HBO drama “The Wire,” as well as noted his daughter’s affection for small-politics NBC comedy, “Parks and Recreation.”   Romney only wishes he could be that cool.