Salutations, dear reader! I assume since you’ve stumbled over here that you’re in grave assistance of help in the English department (and I don’t just mean talking to your advisor). Perhaps you’re a science student and they’re forcing you to take a bunch of classes studying Shakespeare and you could, quite frankly, care less?

Well, you’re in the right place. As an aspiring writer and college student myself, I thought I’d let you in on some tricks of the trade and divulge some trade secrets of us scholarly intellectuals who pour our noses through dusty books and try to figure out just what the hell John Keats was talking about.

And now I present to you, free of charge, your guide to literature classes!

Step 1: Pick a random liberal cause

This is one of the most overlooked but important aspects of literary criticism. After all, what would a text be without ham-handed lecturing? Here’s a list of some favorite ideas authors and teachers love to discuss. When in doubt, just pick one of the below and blurt it out during a class discussion:

• Objectification of women/feminism
• Evils of industrialization
• Alienation
• Loss of innocence (this is a real popular one)
• General “life sucks” thread

Remember, nothing fiction ever turns out happy or looks or the positive or normal side of life. All “realist” works involve complicated love triangles, suicide, conflicted people, and rich middle-class douchebags with nothing better to do than apparently subtly argue with one another. Enjoy!

Step 2: Always overanalyze everything

That’s right, no line, rhyme, bit of dialogue, or ending is ever just what it is. It goes without saying (perhaps you should write it down….HARDY HARDY HAR!) that there is always a hidden meaning or complicated connotation to it. For instance, let’s take this following line:

“Johny walked to the store to buy some bread.”

To the average reader, a simple declarative statement. Not so to burned-out professors who publish in obscure journals. The “bread” represents the earth, as bread is commonly a naturally-grown grain. One could argue that Johny here has a naturalistic urge to escape the smothering confines of suburbia.

Howeverm if you wante dto take a dim and pessismistic view, one could argue going to the store represents being stuck in the chains of commerce, and thus he is a victim of commercialization. It’s all up to you, really. Keep in mind, nothing is ever just something. A cigar may just be a ciagr, but what does it represent, Freud?

Step 3: Ignore the author

There’s this little myth that the author has a certain intende dmeaning or puts himself in his own work. “Why, he wrote the story, surely he brings his own expereinces to the table, right?” you say. Wrong, my naieve friend. A story is just a story.

For instance, James Joyce wrote many stories about frustrated men who seemed unable to communicate with anyone around them. Joyce himself was widely ackowledged to be a belligerent drunk who hated Ireland. But scholars assert he had nothing at all to with any of the emotions cropping up in his stories, even though he kinda wrote them and they sprang from his conciousness. Bollocks.

Many authors have said they have “written poems even [they] don’ understand”. This is commonly understood to be a fancy way of saying “I wrote a bunch of deep-sounding bs to confuse people and look smart”.

Well, hope this helped. Good luck on writing those papers and don’t forget to buy too many clove cigarettes!

So how is everybody doing tonight? Boy, I tell ya, I just flew in from New York. There’s no joke there, just something I thought I’d mention.

So ya wanna be a stand-up comedian, eh? Well, I thought as a public service (which has recently been court-ordered) I’d let you….yes, YOU….see how you can be a successful stand-up entertainer. If you follow my step-to-step guide, you should be headlining the Apollo or starring in a Comedy Central series that’ll get canceled after 3 seasons.

• Step 1: Pick a topic

This is without a doubt one of the most important and overlooked aspects of humor. What would a joke be without some subject to satirize? Here’s my helpful list of popular topics that are sure to annoy and bore those in attendance get a riotous response from the crowd!

As you can see, you have a diverse field to choose from. The beauty of it is you can even mix and match! Say you’re dating a black girl; that’s satirical gold right there. Audiences will rejoice and you’ll bring the house down as you inform everyone that yes, there are slight and embarassing cultural differences between white and black people. Imagine your devoted fans peeing their pants as you enlighten them to the untold story of how men and women have difficulties in relationships because they just can’t get along!

• Tacky get-up is a must

When you arrive onto the stage, you don’t want to come off as some hoity-toity elitist. The standard outfit for any performer is a suit jacket with jeans. This lets everyone know you’re somewhat professional but you’re basically blue-collar at heart. It helps the audience identify with you and let them know that they’re not the only ones trying half-assed mid-life crisis gimmicks to escape the reality of their soul-crushing office jobs. For gals, either a dress or just jeans and a shirt will suffice.

If you’re a bit younger and are still coasting on your parent’s money, it’s perfectly acceptable to wander on-stage in a hoddie with rumpled hair. It gives you a slacker/scamp feel, and lets people know that dare you accepted from your friends to try open-mic night when you all were blazing it up gets taken seriously.

• Did something midly interesting happen to you last week? We’d all love to hear about it!

Have you ever stood in line at the grocery store and noticed something slightly askew? Were you talking to your wife and did she not really talk in a funny voice, but in your head you imagined she did? Do you feel like your friends act completely natural but they’re still somehow loveably flawed anyway?

Well, step on up and tell us all about it. We weren’t there at your last family re-union and have no idea what your uncle is actually like, but we’d love to hear his private business discussed in public anyway! Mundane is the new fascinating nowadays. Of course a packed bar will be fascinated with how fed-up you were in traffic today. Why pay for a therapist when you can just regale us with your tales of astute observation?

• When all else fails, it’s time to get awkward

If you can’t overpower an audience with your bullheaded obnoxiousness, you can always play the “weird, but in a smart kinda way” card. Breathe real heavily into the microphone and take a long time between punchlines, making sure to uncomfortably stare at the audience. This sense of playful, postmodern smugness can cover up the fact that you’re actually incredibly nervous and have just forgotten your lines.

• New material is to be shunned

Did you stumble upon somewhat amusing material? Well, it’s time to beat it into the ground. Make sure to repeat the same line over and over, ad naseum. People watching you will probably have no idea, and if so, will love to hear about the fact that someone you were dating broke up with you over voice mail for the 345th time. Repetition builds rhythm, I do say.

• Being reactionary is the key

Refute all logic in the name of common sense. Empiricism and rationale are the enemy. Aren’t you just tired of all this anti-spanking sentiment? Everyone else is too. Feel free to point this out and air your dogma in the guise of humor. Kids today just misbehave way too much in supermarkets, even though one rarely actually sees that. Mock all liberal ideas, because a group of people are always guaranteed to clap and applaud whenever you throw in “U.S.A.!” or just randomly yell something to get your point across.

Well, that’s it for now here at Cantankerous Chicanery, kiddies. Stay safe, and don’t forget to try the veal.

It occured to me the other day as I pulled up to a gas station and I fished one of the few dollar bills out my pitifully thin wallet, and turned off the car (effectively ending the stream of Pixies songs coming from my CD player), and glided across the pavement in my Vans, that I am a member of Generation Y.

Oh, trust me, it wasn’t an easy conclusion to come to. I used to lie to myself that I wasn’t some aggrevating douchebag. But, as I think back on it, I scream pretentious. I’ve watched weird underground arty films at friends’ houses. I’ve had discussions about indy music with some of the fellow twentysomethings in my class. And yes, it pains me to say it, I own a pair of crocs.

It goes without saying that this youth movement is one of the oddest ones to arise in recent memory. Not since the flappers who danced to jazz in the Roraing 20s have we seen such a curiously self-absorbed group of young adults who aspire to such artistic inclinations with no sense of meaning whatsoever. The parade of both men and women decked out in purple plaid, wayfarers that could take over the countenances of Mount Rushmore, and a copy of Che Guevera’s biography hanging oh-so-indiscriminately out of their bookbags is a sight to behold on college campuses nowadays.

Despite my smarky satire, I am helpless to overturn this tide, and humbly assert myself on my knees to give in o this tide. In my younger years, I had browsed through Hot Topic and proudly sported those baggy JNCO pants with a gazillion chains on them (great to annoy the ‘rents, but impractical otherwise). I was also a lot more idealistic and direct in expressing myself. Now I find myself hiding behind an ironic smirk, and catch myself listening to Poison the Well a bit more than I do Pantera.

It’s a hazy path to navigate, havng to learn of a million different non-commerical music genres: trip-hop, twee, melodic hardcore, post-rock, shoegazing, and other such silly and obscure styles that escape me at this moment. I’ve also become absorbed in Youtube and Facebook. What with its absurd non-sequitir mni-montages and the back-and-forth flow of messages exchanged, the computer has become the 2000s version of crack cocaine, addictive and hazardous for all bored teenagers who come into contact with it.

Back in the elder days there was at least some attempt at honest, sincere expression and revolt. I hate to seem like one of those arrogant baby boomers who proclaims “back in my day” (considering I was born in 1988), but it strikes me that previous subcultures had some sort of idelogy or focus in mind. The hippies were staunchly against contemporary suburban materialism and held to the values of peace and love. Punk rock saw this as false and hypocritical, and took a more active and radical stance on the government’s strangehold over our lives.

Goth came along and looked inward, while the other two slowly and quietly rode off into the sunset. The turning point seems to have been the rise of the Seattle sound. When Kurt and his flannel-wearing ilk stumbled along into the mainstream, we saw a different breed of disgruntled adolescence. They were pissed and annoyed, but also somewhat a navel-gazing bunch. Layne Staley and Chris Cornel realized how false this reality was, but almost seemed too helpless and paralyzed to really do anything about it. They seemed more concerned without getting kicked out of the house by their parents than the homeless people living in the street.

And so we come to the end of the cycle, the repulsive hipster. They sport stubble and slightly ragged clothes, but unlike the grunge rocker, they shower regularly. We have simultaneously managed to reappropriate every single style before us and rendered it null and meaningless. True expression is avoided; we instead communicate in saracstic asides and onloy hint at varying social and personal problems. Emo is the shining example of today’s attitude; there’s obvious inner turmoil brewing in there, but we cleverly dodge it by wearing tight shirts with graphic designs and smoking cigarettes against the wall at a local show (known as “the scene”).

I envy those who are cheesy and induge in it. So to those of you with a garden gnome or a singing bass tacked up on the wall….huzzah! Continue the good fight against snobby urban elitism! When I hang around my friends who unquestonably crank up Flyleaf or jam out to Theory of a Deadmna, they did it with an honest and unknowing naivete. They know nothing of “quality” or “taste”.

I recall last weekend I was at a festival with my family. My mom’s friend, a 50 year old woman who could best be described as “somewhat dorky”, was merrily swaying to a local cover band up on stage. Neer mind that she was completely uncoordinated and out of it (according to the current vernacular), she was enjoying herself and having the time of her life. Oh, the beauty in it, the sublime quality of a complete lack of coordination and coolness.

I confess all this but I’m stll fighting. Don’t worry….I haven’t headed too far into the land of obnoxiousness. I still bust out a few Linkin Park songs on my mixtapes, I have yet to acquire a true iPod, and I’ve never been spotted with my laptop in a public cafe. The days of Monster energy drinks are calling to me, but every so often I get “We’re an American Band” by Grand Funk Railroad stuck in my head.

With the 60s and 70s long gone and the 2000s almost coming to a close as well, we’ve seen the slow and gradual eulogy for the biker culture unfolding. With the psychedelic guitar riffs waning and being replaced by bass beats for rap songs, so we rarely hear the engine of a Harley Davidson reving up in the night. What’s caused this, where have these tattooed outlaws gone to, and why do guys on bikes these days insist on shaving?

When the culture first emerged, they were seen as renegades, thugs, and violent criminals. No less than the FBI came down on them. They were rumored (and noted) to have dealt in drug dealing, arms trafficking, murder, and had ties to big-time organized crime. Now you can go to a chop shop on the side of your local highway and get advice and suggestions from a friendly sales associate that resembles more of Wal-Mart than a road gang.

I feel torn about this lost way of life. On one hand, it’s easy to romanticize these rebels. They were nonconformists in a day and age when it was hard and even dangerous & life-thretaning to be a pariah, and wher eyou couldn’t just go buy leather accessories at the local Hot Topic to piss mommy and daddy. They were hard-drinking, tough charaters who didn’t take shit off of anybody and did things their own way, the laws and rules of society be damned.

At the same time, while it’s easy to think of them as modern-day pirates, it’s easy to forget they were basically heartless thieves who would just as soon slit your throat as look at you. In a sense, they seem like bullies who were overly masculine. Also, I’m not a big fan of their at-times seemingly blatant racism and their attitude towards women (they commonly viewed them as property).

The hippies, interestingly, hired them as security for many of their concerts, seeing a kindred spirit in their anti-establishment ethos and hoping this was a way to stick it to The Man. What they didn’t realize, however, was that these two groups couldn’t be more different from each other. Flower children believed in peace and love and saw the existing order as impediments to their utopia; Hell’s Angels and the like just wanted to get high and fuck and fight and hated authority because cops tend to frown upon those sorts of things.

So the question is, are they an idealistic free romaing society or a group of violent malcontents built on menace and destruction? Who knows. I’m not a member of a biker group, nor do I know anyone in such a group. I wasn’t around in the old days, so my judgemnet is perhaps a bit skewed.

What I do know is that nowadays, whatever your opinion on the past incarnations, “bikers” nowadays (to use that term loosely) tend to be the typical weekend warriors. They work some office job or at a garage shop during the day and on their off time they like to go barreling down the freeway in chaps and T-shirts that are way too tight for their beer bellies. What has happened to the freedom of the open pavement?

Like everything else in life, and as is the fate of all seemingly misanthropic movements, it has been adopted and sanitized by the mainstream. I have an unle that swears by his bikes and patronizes the Harley Davidson store but he’s one of the nicest guys I’ve met.

Most of your typical bikers now are old 40 year old men looking to the past for nostalgia, trying to reconcile their youth spent tripping massive balls on LSD with the current reality of working some shit minmum-wage job, so they turn to Budweiser and doing air guitar whenever they hear dad rock in public to try and seem cool. O’, it truly was dust in the wind, if ya catch my drift.

It would be an effortless task to generalize all of these days as harmless suburbanites who know nothing of true grit and glory like the bikers of the past. And yet, who’s to judge them? Who’s to define what makes a true biker? By its very definition, the biker culture involves a love and respect for riding choppers. That is all. Should we demonize these modern incarnations simply because they have respectable careers, father children, and pay their taxes? I think not, in a sense.

What’s happened to literature? It seems our society is on a gradual decline when it comes to reading. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve run into that don’t read at all, and as an aspriring author, this really hurts me. At one time in this world, most of the general public poured through newspapers and novels, and they did this voraciously. Nowadays people consider themselves scholars if they can get through an issue of Maxim.

Oftentimes, in this pitiful little paradise of intellectualism I’ve carved out for myself here, I feel like the proverbial crazy homeless man ranting to himself. In the day and age of nightclubs, rock music, fads and trends, and 24-hour television, who has time to curl up with a book? Moreover, who really cares?

Recently, during my Interpreting Literature class, my teacher said something interesting. He claimed, “Most of the world doesn’t respect what we do.” (in regards to English majors) And that’s a bitter pill and a harsh truth to swallow. To know that my sole aim in life is to create beautiful and lyrical passages of prose, to illuninate the inner workings of the soul with carefully crafted stories, and to have it perish in the annals of oblivion, is a maddening exercise in frustration.

Then again, maybe I’m biased. I’m sure many mathmeticians out there feel disgruntled that no one really cares for their formulas and equations. There are numerous stories of ignored film makers who craft artistic documentaries and dramas, only to see tjem fall by the wayside of obsucre indy festivals. So of course everyone’s always going to highly value their craft. (The business majors of the world have absolutely nothing to worry about.)

But, entertain me for a minute. The very grace of writing and comprehending this is what makes us human. It’s one of the divine qualities that seperates us from animals and allowed us to stake our claim to the top of the food chain. Once upon a time scribes, official “writers” for the aristocracy, were highly valued and allowed to congreaget and be part of the upper class. The illiterate were cast off into the lower class, being thought of as lacking the comprehension to truly be superior.

You can talk and move all day, but at the end of the night, I feel one can only truly reveal their emotions and record their thoughts by putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as it were). A diary or a poem allows us to sit there and collect our thoughts and organize our sense of expression, as opposed to being put on the spot and the improv of face-to-face talking.

Literature also lets us figure ourselves out. As we trudge through the weeks, aimlessly wandering to our jobs like zombies, we don’t really get a sense of perspective. When we lose ourselves in a magnum opus like 1984 or Waiting For Godot, we acquire an understanding for the human condition. wE’re so caught up in the selfish and subjective view we have of the world, but books became a rabbit hole, to escape into another world, to get a feel for how someone else might see things.

Words are a ladder to knowledge. As a kid, I often had my nose stuffed in hardback covers. Now, as an adult, I feel I have a better understanding for just what is reality, as compared to other people who drank alcohol or dated one another or went to parties or whatever. It’s also sad to see people turn to crappy fanatsy or science ficton. I essentially feel Harry Potter has turned kids onto reading in a shallow way. It never adressed serious, controversial questions or provides a realitsic view of things like, say, Mary Gaitskill.

Indeed, along with mental atrophy and the public’s general apathy to art, genre fiction may well be destroying the art of creative writing from the inside. It sdumbed-down and formualaic plots, one-dimensional archetypal characters, its meaningless plots, lack of substance, and meekly happy endings are producing a sense of lowered expectations for the few people out there that do read.

Obviously, this is a generalization. Not all legal dramas and horror fiction are mind-numbingly atrocious. Sci-fi actually has its roots in many works of the literary canon: H.G. Well’s classic The Time Machine and the many works of Phillip K. Dick. I do have to say, however, that it’s puzzling to see someone like Dean Koontz get all the attention while Donald Barthleme falls on the ash heap of history.

Literary fiction is falling by the wayside, and is becoming an increasingly marganilized academic pursuit. Even the aspiring English majors out there would most likely only read Thomas Pychon if if was on the class syllabus. The only people studying Flannery O’Connor and searching for meaning in it are the teachers and heads of the English faculties. Oh, what a dark and dreary world we live in these days…..

People now are so focused on pop culture they could really care less about any sort of art. Many theatre productions are falling by the wayside because teenagers (and even soem adults) these days only care about heading to the mall to outfit themselves in the latest fashon or keeping track of Tila Tequila’s every move or updating their Facebooks or listening to the newest hip-hop track.

Look, I’m not saying no one should be allowed on YouTube or that if they go a Theory of a Deadman concert they should be shot and arrested. I myself enjoy many facets of contemporary culture and am sometimes of being a lazy fuck who just lays video games all day. Just keep in mind knowledge is what makes a human being. Many countries don’t have the luxury of literacy. Books can enlighten us, teach us a moral lesson, cause us to ponder many essential questions, and simply entertain us and bring us joy and take us away from this rancid and bland endeavor called life. If you look throughout history, you will see that many empires fell once they got away from the cultivation of philosophy and writing and instead turned to excessive hedonism and shallow excursins and pleasures. Roman empire, anyone?

Dontcha think we’re close to that point, as a paralell?

Everybody’s raving about the “new and improved” Smackdown. Go on any message board or dirt rag and hear about the epic feud between CM Punk and Jeff Hardy. Hear them marvel at his masterful straight-edge heel character. Listen to them praise John Morrison’s recent in-ring work. To many smarks in the know, right now Friday Night Smackdown is the premier show in terms of workrate, and miles ahead of that stagnant and boring RAW, which no one watches.

And yet, while meeting up with a friend from my childhood, I recall a conversation I had with his friend. We were all hanging out in his bedroom, and somehow we got on the topic of professional wrestling. Discovering a fellow fan, I naturally engaged him in enthusiastic conversation. He let it be kown he watches RAW every Monday night, that he likes John Cena, and that Kane his favorite wrestler.

“You ever watch Smackdown?” I quired him, smelling a mark in my path. “No. When does that come on?” “Friday nights. They’ve been putting on some good matches.” He seemed nonplussed and the evening carried on. It occured to me at that moment all the hard work by the performers, the bookers, hell even teh camera crew was in vein.

Let’s be honest, who’s gonna even stay home to watch wrestling on Friday nights? I do if I don’t have any plan,s but most weekends I’m out. Recently I found out an interesting statistic: the online fans usually only make up about 10% of the fanbase. The ones who follow the behind-the-scenes happenings, are completely aware it’s fake, and root for MVP or Jack Swagger to be pushed only comprise a small fraction of teh fanbase.

The rest of those in attendance are those who root faithfully for John Cena, cheer on every DX reunion, boo Orton or Jericho without a moment’s notice, buy all the merchandise, and think a match is okay no matter what. No star ratings or “botched” moves here, folks. Just naieve fans appreacting a simple card.

If you go on the Internet and are overwhelemed by the elitist negativity it seems to spawn, you would think the whole world is like that. But once you get off this computer screen, and go trek into the outside world, you realize barely any of the human population is like that. Most people walk about on the streets, unconcerned that Glassjaw is slightly more poppy on their last record than they were on their previous release. They have no idea who Glassjaw are, and it doesn’t bother them one bit.

I’ve spent countless hours scrolling through the music secton on 4chan, and it’s a place where they even consider Gorgoroth “lame commercial metal”. Nothing seems to please these people. They are apparently in search of the most obscure, esoteric, unlistenable collection of noises that could generously be called music.

The average laymen has neither heard of these bands, not do they truly really care. And yet, there is a market for this. If sites like Pitchfork Media are any indication, there is a legion of individuals intelligent enough to think for themselves and break away from the mainstream. Sites like these attract thousands and thousands of viewers, apparently.

The question is, where do people like this exist in real life? As weird as it sounds, I often try to picture what these online hipsters look like and act like in real life. I have a few friends who somewhat fit the mold. The curious mix of brevity, biting sarcasm, and critial insight is one that could not possibly exist in a real human being. Then again, maybe it lays into the whole “we wear a mask when we get on a computer” thing.

The recent backlash against Transformers 2 was more telling of this phenomenon than anything. You had an equal number of people who loved and hated it. There was no middle ground (which is a sad erosion of our times…but I digress). Those raised on Roger Ebert and 411Mania loathed its blatant appeal to commercialistic interest and its shallow popcorn-entertainment. Those for it said it served its purpose, as harmless fun, and that the critics should mellow out and stop judging everything by the same Citizen Kane standards.

What’s ironic is, originally, those who observed and discussed art and music were supposed to represent the voice of the common man. Many singers that the underground reveres—Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, The Beatles—champion and seem to look out for the everyday emotional experiences hat every 9-to-5′er goes through.

In fact, what makes something more “authentic” than another? Fall Out Boy and Death Cab for Cutie both have guitars and drums that just produce sounds. In the end, that’s all a song is. You can try to make it as discordant or subtle as possible, but in the end you will have to have some sort of melody or rhythm, hence that is the definition of music.

The sad fact is, if you ask any random person on the street, they will be more likely to listen to Lil’ Wayne and watch WWE and The Goods than to buy a Mos Def album and even hear of ROH. What sells is the lowest common denominator, sadly enough. In the 90s, the underground somewhat came to us, and thus opened our eyes more to it. Ironically enough, the counterculture became more accessible by this point (more on that later).

That’s not to say all confusing art of television shows are bad, or that its snobby and highbrow fanbase turns me off to it. I’ve never seen Dexter but I love what I feel are lot of underrated shows, like Angel or Nip/Tuck. No one more than me feels that most of the general populace gobbles up whatever the status quo has to say without as much as a second thought, and that it’s depressing than truly great creative works (be they Samoa Joe vs. Homicide from ROH to El Topo) get ignored because most people are stpid and lazy and can’t eb bothered to seek these out or watch them.

At the same time, perhaps we’re getting a little too rejecive for our own good. Not everythng that’s poplar carries the whiff of evil, and some things are unknown because they should stay that way (Bloody Murder anyone?). The indie scene has a sense of conformity to itself, and it seems most Internet boards just simply enforce an unwritten code of absolute agreement/groupthink. It’s a natural human sociology thing. Who’s to say that the only reason more people are aware of and support alternative culure is because the World Wide web hasn’t simply allowed easier access to it? That’s not working for it like our cultural anscestors did; that’s the lazy way to bohemia.

Can we just shut the fuck up and get over hings, basically? I mean, am I the only one who really lieks both T.I. and Broken Social Scene, and appreciates the genius of both, in their own respective ways? The critics are going to like what they like, and the public will like what they like. It’s actually two different styles, so it’s almost impossible to judge one by the other’s standards. In fact, that’s how it’s always really been.

In conclusion, I feel there is a widening chasm between the critics and the comoners. If we don’t do something, it might get worse, via the 24/7 democracy known as the Internet.

If you look at our culture today, the people we could arguably be said to worship are celebirties. But what exactly is a celebirty? The sense of the word itself is curious: someone who is known by others. If a lot of people know them, what does that make the people who know them? We are all simply people, regardless of title or designation.

At the top of the poplarity food chain, past the politicians and actors, are rock stars. The lead singers of rock n’ roll bands, the frontmen with their wails and grunts accompayning the chugging rhythm of the electric gitar and leanding a melody to the banging of the drums.

It strikes me that we are no different from any other culture: finding certain figures to take on larger-than-life ideals through which we experience our pain, hardships, triumphs, and own personal and introspective thoughts.

My particular thesis is that rock stars are modern-day shamans. The role of the shaman, in ancient tribal socities, was to lead others in a spiritual journey by way of ethogens and an organized ritual in which everyone would dance wildly and let themselves go in an ego death of ecstasy.

Tell me this doesn’t sound like any hippified music festival you’ve been to.

The old stereotype of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll ring true in some senses. Through these extreme repudiations of a conevntional life, we find authenticity and, perhaps, discover ourselves. Psychedelic music, heav metal, and punk elucidate common emotions we experience in everyday life: frustration, anger, enlightment, boredom, terror, and depression.

The cult of personality entrances us and we are taken over with someone who is quite simply so charismatic and expressive we have no chance but to turn our heads and give them our attention. Jim Morrison is remebered for being a dark and libertine figure, when in real life he was actually remembered for being quite shy and withdrawn.

The rock star occupies a unique place in our world: he is famous and endowed with money, despite the fact that he seems to rebel and be at odds with seemingly every aspect of contemporary American life. When we showered Kurt Cobain with love, attention, and respect for his art, he completely revolted against it.

With the 198os and the dominance of hair metal, we got all the aspects of the countercultural revolution but none of the meaing behind it. Bands like Motley Crue and Poison blindly descended into drug addiction and the void (essentially) with no sense of social awareness or confessional lyrics.

Nirvana and Pearl Jam turned the music industry on its head by not responding to the promises of riches and fame. They essentially mocked the whole idea of rock and turned it on its head.

Listen to this and tell me it does stir or strike at the very cockles of your heart. To hear Layne Staley’s disappointed wails and the eerie sound of grunge music is to feel it for yourself. For anyone who has been through a breakup, an addiction, or just feeling like crap, you can relate to the impressionistic and all-encompassing thoughts emoted in this song.

This doesn’t just extend to the suburbs, either. The hood has its heroes and prophets. Tupac became an example of the destructive qualities inherent in inner-city black youth. Nowadays T.I. or Kayne West embody the desire for paper and swagger than so many of African-Americans strive for.

So what happened to rock stars? They seem dead and buried, like leisure suits or some other tired cliche from days gone by. When we turn on the radio, we’re assaulted with endless Led Zeppelin/Soundgarden clones who all churn out the same tired riff and angsty lyrics about some vague malaise they feel. Nickelback and Saving Abel preach both partying and being frustrated with life/wanting to save the world, without any of the feeling experienced in past legitimate artists.

Perhaps, then, they are still shamans and reflections of our times. We prize and praise generic medicority, and so we see it in the bands we listen to. Go further underground and you find the scene kids: endless clones of kids in tight pants, graphic t-shirts, and fedoars all cowding around a local show, chatting about who’s dating, not paying attention to the music at all. It seems true meaning laden in hard rock is gone for now.

So relax, put on some Pink Floyd, and fire it up. You’re about to be transported to another world. And trust me, you’re no different than the Samoans in the 1000s. When you look at it from a certain sociological perspective, it all boils down to the basic standard that we’re all people. From ow to the beginning of time, we’ve all been through the same basic life experiences and have acheived the same victories and been through the same hardships.

Put away the community newspaper and check this out. This is a review of every play ever made, ever.

• You get to the place where it’s at, which happens to be an old abandoned warehouse that you’re not sure if they’ve legally rented or not. A few people hang outside smoking cigarettes. They have on tattered clothes and ruffled hair, and again you’re unaware if they’re part of the cast and that’s just how they’re normally dressed.
• You buy your ticket, which is printed on the back of a laminated insurance card. Once you take a seat some odd 50s pop music is playing, ostensibly to set the tone and mood of the performance. You think someone just left the radio on.
• A woman dressed in a knapsack walks out and breathes into the microphone for twenty minutes. Some in the audience chuckle as this is supposed to be funny. Others scratch their goatee (people in the audience always have goatees) as if in meaningful thought. You’re sure what to do or even what the hell is going on, so you laugh at all the serious parts and happen to ponder upon the more humorous lines. Everyone in the audience looks at you and immediately recognizes what an ignorant, uncultured philistine you are.
• After an hour of this another character wonders onstage. He is dressed in only underwear and chains. They trade diaologue that casts her as the dominant figure and he as a sort of underling/dog figure. They ask meaningless yes/no questions for a while as you try to play off checking text messages on your phone.
• Intermission finally comes up. You buy stale milkduds and lukewarm lemondade from some chick with blue hair. You stand in the lobby and listen to someone say either what a good actor so-and-so is or how interesting the plot developments are. You wonder when the hell you’ll get to go home.
• Act II is up! Once everyone files back in, a guy with thick, bouncy hair bangs on an acoustic guitar and reads a poem talking about how empty he feels after the “first war”, whatever that is. The life of the actual play seems to have acquired more energy this second go-round, or maybe the slow doldrums of insanity are setting in on you. Either way, the senselessness has acquired an odd taste of quirky appeal by now.
• Audience particpiation time! The actor on stage yells at the audience. Some people yell back, partly out of a desire to participate in the art, partly out of frustration, mostly out of pure boredom. A few select audience members are confused and thought this was a motivational speaking seminar, and thus rightly react out of disappointed rage. They reall need better GPS systems.
• Towards the climax and denounement, the play loses a lot of steam. The action gets “resolved” in a rather unsure manner, as one character either is shot/disappears/says something cryptic and that’ss it. If it’s a fancy production they a curtain call. If not, the actors just walk off the stage and pray to God the paying attendes catch on after a while that it’s ended. You get the feeling the playwright was either too fucked up on drugs to come up with a good conclusion, or the actors flat-out forgot their lines. Everyone’s too embarassed to say, however, so they just claim they appreciate its daring, avant-garde attitude.
• You have cme away from this play not with a profound paradigm shift concering your view of the human condition, but rather a “wtf” quality and a desire to never see pretentious bullcrap again. Congratulations! You’ve had your first (and probably) last taste of high culture and theater.

Well, that’s all for me. After insulting drama (which could be considered kicking a dog while it’s down), I’m on my way to a MMA cage fight. Enjoy yourselves, kiddies, and remember, don’t drink and drive. Get your drinking done first at home and then go out for a cruise on the town.

Greetings again, ye faithful. It’s your host of hostility, The Angry Cynic, back with another edition of that good ol’ Cantankerous Chicanery. Sorry I took a sabattical for a while. That’s what punching your monitor in anger, having it crack, and sending it in to the drones to fix gets you.

What shocked me is that while I was away my blog got more hits than ever. Does that mean you guys prefer when I’m not around? If so, just say so in the comments section and I’ll be sure to enact bicentennial updates in the near future. And thanks to the netizens out there who type things like “kayfabe porn” and “volcano” in those search engines. I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for here, but I hope you discover whatever they are on your eternal quest. There’s a lot of you that really wanna see John Morrison naked, eh? *wink wink, nudge nudge*

Anyway, let’s jump right into today’s topic. Recently, in my college newspaper, they did an editorial cartoon satirizing liberal arts majors (oh, the irony in a drawing mocking creative endeavors). It showed a potential English major serving at a Starbuck’s.

This is a theme that often pops up in our intellecual realm. The writers and expressive souls in our society are shunned. Get a real job, others cry out. It’s often said that poetry or literary criticism is useless. This line  of thinking states it contributes no greater good to the movemnt of the gears that is our everyday society.

I agree with them. To endlessly disseminate the meaning of The Cherry Orchid or to analyze how Jospeh Conrad’s style and diction got across what sort of modd he was trying to establish in Heart of Darkness, this has no further or meaningful bearing on the world at large. Some single mom in the projects collecting welfare, an art history degree isn’t going to help her. Nor will it really shift any relevant paradigms in a larger context.

But neither will a MBA in Accounting. I ask you, what good is business either? We constantly trump the value of “worthwhile careers” but how are they worthwhile? They seem primarily concerned with economics and making money, which is fine if you’re a businessman or into economics. But mortage brokers, pencil pushers, crunching numbers and consolidating liquadtions…..what bearing does this have on the big picture?

Our planet still suffers. There’s still widespread famine and disease in much of the third world. You, sitting right here at your computer, reading this very words…..would it really bother you if tommorrow the man doing insurance claims for some big car company took a day off work? Does the very collapse of Western civilization depend on a bunch of cubicle zombies showing up for work every day? Does it affect a majority of the world’s immediate surroundings and health if top-level management in some corporation somewhere had taken finals for a bachelor’s in philosophy instead?

Everything is meaningless, in a relativistic sense. Even some intellectual endeavors we champion, such as psychology or sociology, are really useless. The pop culture image of psychology is the exploration of the mysterious recesses of the human mind, to plum the depths of our psyche to figure ourselves out. What they don’t mention is the truth; it’s a lot of aggrevating tests, empirical research, and scientific understanding of boring neurons firing off in the brain. Goodbye Freud, hello B.F. Skinner.

Sociology—-it’s a field that fascinates me, but let’s really look at it: Why is it even a scholary consideration? People act one way when they’re alone and go all crazy in a crowd. Bam, thesis solved, let’s focus on building bridges that don’t collapse already. All the research and test runs in the world (which are subject to bias and drawing conclusions, btw) aren’t really fixing the world or solving problems or even really saying or doing anything. “Oh, look at that, Professor James just concluded a study finding when people wear socks on Sunday, they are slightly more agressive. How’s about that?”

Conclusion: unless you’re in the Peace Corps, actively feeding the impoverished or building homes for indigenous people in foreign lands, or whatnot, your contribution to existance is nil. Everyhing else is either entertainment (wrestlers, musicians, actors), which is not essential for survival, or self-indulgent (bankers, CEOs, office workers), who work only to procrur a paycheck and circle-jerk those in their respected field.

The woman in the beret and the main in a tie are both wrong. Suck on it, bitches.

First off, let me just say it is disgusting that Nickolodeon is still allowing Chris Brown to host the Nickolodeon Kids Choice Awards despite him beating Rihanna. I guess this proves that no matter what you do, as long as you’re famous and good looking and a rich rapper you can get away with whatever. Never mind that there are plenty of hardworking, normal people that are poor and have a strong moral center, but they don’t have an agent with Hollywood connections, so they get nowhere in life.

Way to teach those kiddies, Nick! Maybe soon ol’ Suzie in 2nd grade will start getting the smackdown for passing around the cooties, if ya know what I mean. I’m glad they finally took the iniative and started actually providing educational proramming to teach these kids something. Boys need to learn how to conduct themselves in the real world when they grow up. Eh, guess they can’t all be Are You Afraid of the Dark?

And as sad as this is, Rihanana is pretty stupid too. Most girls will whine and cry about how men aren’t sensitive anymore but they all go after the brawny asshole because it makes them feel better. At this point she honestly kinda deserves it if she’s gonna take that dirtbag back.

I think the media needs to focus less on their swank and rich homes and instead point out that CHRIS BROWN IS A FUCKING WOMAN BEATER. We should hear more about the tragedy of domestic abuse and how to stop it, instead of it being treated by the police as a trivial matter. How sexist and unfeminist has our society become?

With that out of the way, time to move on to my topic. I recently had the chance to watch The Devil and Daniel Johnston. And boy was that about two hours of my life I’ll never get back. Now, I say that thinking it was a good movie and a well-shot documentary. But the real question is, what the hell is the big whoop over this Daniel Johnston fellow?

For those unfamiliar, here’s a sample of his music so atrocious it would make a dying cat puke musical maestro abilities:

The guy has a basic grasp of pop structures, but he is extremely overrated. His music is very rough and crude and there’s no structure or rhyme or reason to it. Bob Dylan was able to achieve a folk sound while seeming under control and with every melody heard in a nuanced fashion. John Lennon used simple chords to get across a universal message of love, peace, and the human condition in a pleasurable manner. But this guy? It’s like a 5-year old’s diary entries turned into a song by going to the local Toys R’ Us and banging on the keyboard that’s out on display.

And here come the torrent of indie rock fans to his defense. “He’s simply a genius!” “You don’t get it! You’ve been raised so much on commercial rock, dude!” I do get it. I just don’t particularly care for it. Has anybody ever actually listened to it? And I don’t mean stare at the album while ina record shop so you can try and bang the vegan girl behind the counter, I mean actually sat down and listened to it? It’s not good music, period. I can record myself taking a dump and it would sound better than him.

It seems a lot of alternative rockers patronize him with a strong hint of irony and mocking approval. His music does come across as raw and almost brutally sincere, yet his fans are the typical saracstic, flannel-wearing 20-year-olds. Despite his Christian rants and religious breakdowns I’m sure his fanbase are all cappucino-sipping atheists.

This is not to say people with handciaps cannot make art, let alone good art. Travis Meeks, the guitarist and lead singer for days of the New, reportedly has autism. And yet he crafts some of the most beautiful acoustic rock ever:

Thd difference is, and take out your notepads boys and girls because this is the important part, he understands not only what sounds good but how to put it together and hone it so that it comes together as a coherent whole. You can argue “deconstructionist art” all day until your eyes bled through your thick-rimmed glasses. But all art is structured. I hate to burst your bubble, Mr. Beckett Wannabe, but even art that expresses a theme of fragmentation or has jarring structure is…..wait for it……planned out months, even years in advance, and is carefully crafted and even *gasp* edited!

It’s also nice to know he worked for McDonald’s even though they’re a corporation that produces unhealthy food that is mass-mrketed and they gobble up precious land and resources to make room for their locations. And it’s also so sweet that he wanted to be the spokesperson for Mountain Dew even though it’s the liquid equivalent of heroin and they’re also a big business that regularl swindles its investors, the customers, and its own employees. Hey, it’s all part of his cutesy, idiot savant image though, right?

During one point in the movie, they talked about how he yelled at the members of Sonic Youth (whom he was hanging out with) and how the lead singer got pissed at him and ditched him. Fuck them. This goes to show you how hypocritical the whole college/art scene is. They claim to be all underground and against the macho aesthetic but when somebody gets up in HIS face there’s about to be a fight.

I get the feeling a lot of snobby, prentious d-bags like him because they vicariously want to relive their inner child through him. Because his music is whimsical and innocent, they feel like they can leave the adult world and its responsibilities and foibles behind. This is a guy who should have gotten treatment for his obvious mental hang-ups. Instead, he got dragged to shows to perform. He reminds me a lot of the character in Dostovesky’s The Idiot: a noble simpleton destroyed by the corruption of the adult world. Record comapnies claimed they were going to take care of him and when he didn’t sell well enough they dropped him like a bad habit.

Many claim to like him because he’s different and nobody else sounds like him. Okay. That doesn’t make it good music. That just makes it odd. If I wear orange boots while everyone else sports regular sneakers, does that make me some sort of lyrical prophet or wise philosopher? No. It just means Wednesdays are half-off at Payless. No Jimi Hendrix to see here, move along.

Peple are just going to claim to like him so they can seem oh-so-bohemian. You see, they’re enlightened because they’re into someone that everyone else isn’t. They get his musical genius. The general public will always flock to anything with a whiff of “artistic” or “autistic” or “non-mainstream”.

The Blair Witch Project is proof of this. Even though it came off as novice and amateurish and it looked like a student film gone bad, people raved about it. They bought into the hype even though it wa sbankrolled by a major studio. Oh well, as long as it didn’t have any of the loud explosions or sex scenes or big name actors that Hollywood has, man.

Who’s to say Daniel Johnston is even crazy? To me, he just came off as a very clever self-promoter. He’s basically a guy with an acoustic guitar and a gimmick. You mean to tell me, “Oh, man, I think everybody’s a Satanist and I’m sooooo crazy I’ll have to go to a mental asulym, bu wait, not before I give out my CD to everybody I meet and sign a big record contract! Okay, strap on the straightjacket before R.E.M. calls me to go on tour with them.”

I’m not enough of a cynical bastard to suggest he’s faking the whole thing. He seems a like a guy who is genuinely mentally troubled (after all, anybody that’s hobknobbed with Atlantic Records and still lives at home with their parents is a few fries short of a Happy Meal….not named MC Hammer, that is), but I also think he somewhat exaggerated and exploited it. Basically, he knows what he’s doing and he’s pervertedly using it to his advantage.

Everybody jumps on the bandwagon and likes him because even though he’s modestly popular, he hasn’t broken through to the mainstream. While some people like Kurt Cobain, a majority diss him because of how overly adored he became. I guratantee the same fanboys that jizz thesmevles over his Beatles-as-sung-by-a-toddler style would claim “Dnaiel Johnston is overrated” tommorrow if he suddenly rose to #1 on the billboards. No matter how individualistic or cultivated people fancy themselves to be, they still follow a bandwagon menatlity, sadly enough. It’s just a different sort of bandwagon.

Gosh, the burden of being white and male and Christian and growing up in middle-class Americana. Thank goodness he used his musical abilities to inform us of his pain and have us respect the trials and tribulations he’s going through. That way we don’t have to hear about how peple in the ghetto are addicted to drugs and shoot each other every day or how Mexicans have to sneak into this country and try and get a job just to feed their families. Y’know, people that actually have it bad off. But poor Daniel Johnston. It breaks my heart to pour myself into his songs and discover what a burden it is to be a fat, lazy slob that becomes a paranoid Christian and a threatening asshole that randomly attacks people.

Look, he’s a violent dickhead and he’s abused drugs. This is the guy we anoint with fame and recognition? You have got to be kidding me. And don’t throw that manic-depressive bullshit at me because I’ve been through those mood swings too and so have others and I’ve never had to go to jail for breaking and entering an old lady’s house. Face it, the guy just doesn’t wanna go out and get a real job and a place of his own. He’s a typical spoiled and priviliged Caucasian male that took advantage of the advantages he was given.

As for his art? That crap goes for a million bucks an auction. Guess it shows to demonstrate what lack of taste people have. The same ones who cultivate a so-called “eccentric” taste in music will also look for the weirdest shit out there to prove how creative and hip and up-to-date they are (or think they are).

In fact, here’s a picture I drew of a dog wearing a tophat that I feel is somewhat marginally better than any of Mr. Jonhston’s body of work:

Go ahead and bitch about how I tore apart your sacred cow (and believe me, with how he looks today, that man is INDEED a cow).