Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
Open Thread
Somehow I don’t think this is what you had in mind.
(backposting so as not to step all over Kay’s thread.)
PS22 Chorus: I Want You Back
Do You Smell That? I Think It’s the Zeitgeist
I was reading today’s New York Times and I spotted this in a review of The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth by Alexandra Robbins, a book that sees former high school nerds triumphing in today’s adult culture:
The teen-to-adult turnabout theme isn’t particularly novel. One of its latest incarnations is a forthcoming Warner Brothers film, “Revenge of the Jocks,” about middle-aged former athletes struggling under the yoke of the nerds, their onetime victims.
OK, first of all, I don’t fully agree with the thesis of the book under review — sure, being an ex-nerd is good training for working on drool-inducing Apple products, being a game designer, creating summer tentpole movies, writing bestselling fantasy novels, or devising exotic, mathematically complex ways for Wall Street to be even more parasitical than it already is. If you’re the kind of ex-nerd who can take advantage of any of those opportunities, life is good; if not, your adult life is probably pretty much like your high school life.
But the notion that nerds now run the world is appealingly high-concept to media types who write trend pieces (and trend books) — and now, if that forthcoming movie is any indication, there could be a shift in what’s considered zeitgeisty.
Revenge of the Jocks? Yes, the movie really is on its way; it’ll be directed by the guy who directed Jackass, and a couple of its writers worked on Tropic Thunder. So it could be a hit. And it’s coming out in, um, 2012.
Do you see how well this could fit into media talk about a “man-cession” (male nerds aren’t really men, after all, as every high school bully will tell you)? Do you see how it jibes with statistics showing that the unemployment rate for blue-collar workers is horrendous, while the rate for the college-educated is not that bad? Do you see how it could fit into the tale of Barack Obama the “elitist” — in an election year?
Never mind the fact that the biggest brainiac in the punditocracy — as defined by the fact that he has a Nobel Prize and no other regularly scheduled pundit does — is constantly railing against policies that keep blue-collar people unemployed. Never mind the fact that MSNBC prime-time viewers are well-educated people who want unions to thrive even if they’ll never belong to one. If this movie is a big hit, pundits will see its success as the public’s way of expressing outrage at effete, technocratic, cerebral types like those in the Obama administration (as if the problem is smart people rather than the wrong smart people), and as a certain harbinger of the triumph of the GOP in 2012 (yes, that’ll be true even if Romney is the nominee — maybe he’ll start eating pork rinds or something).
The David Brooks and Maureen Dowd columns will write themselves.
I see an analogue to this in the past: Bruce Springsteen’s song “Glory Days.” Yeah, Bruce is a lefty, and the lyrics to that song are bleak, but the sound of that song, and of “Born in the USA” (despite its skeptical, downbeat lyrics), helped them fit perfectly into the Reagan “morning in America” moment, with its narrative of flag-waving anti-intellectuals with simple notions of heroism triumphing over wussy effete rootless-cosmopolitan nuance-loving liberals.
Springsteen’s mid-’80s jock-gone-to-seed could be 2012’s jock-getting-back-at-Obambi. And if that happens, once again we’ll be warping the real class war to fit a right-wing frame.
Do You Smell That? I Think It’s the ZeitgeistPost + Comments (77)
Open Thread: Sunday Garden Chat
This is the front yard veggie garden for our community house in Portland, OR. That front box is 24 feet long! If you look closely, you can see my current project: adding herringbone brick in between the boxes ;)
I have to admit: I covet those tidy raised beds almost as much as I do the fishtail shingles, Andrew. Our front (flower) garden is dual raised beds, approximately just-too-wide by as-deep-as-the-space-permitted, assembled from three-high landscaping blocks as time and my middle-aged-fat-broad-with-a-weak-back energies permitted. The only reason the neighbors didn’t torch the place during the several summers while construction was ‘in process’ is that it looked even worse when it was supposed to be a lawn.
So… how’s everybodys’ gardens looking on a Sunday morning?
__
And who’s got plans, gardening or otherwise, for the day?
So That Was Nice
Wedding was lots of fun, and I’m home prepping for the inevitable late night as the usual suspects wander over. My house, despite the fact that it is inhabited by a cranky misanthrope, is kinda sorta the safe house party house of last resort. Which I like, because I like people on my terms.
I’m making up an Irish coffee and cranking some tunes.
On the down side, I think Rosie picked up the kennel cough that Ginny and Guesly were treated for last week, as she was horking and hacking. Fortunately, my vet and his partner will be one of the folks stopping by. Just have him do a quick look at the bitch and schedule an apt. for Monday.
*** Update ***
Thought I would post some live action pet pics from a late night at the Cole household:
Tunch:
Lily:
Spawn of Satan Rosie:
Just Another Photo of Nate Dogg
Ask and ye shall receive!
The Angry Black Parents are jamming to zydeco music in Long Beach while I am getting ready to go to a good friend’s wedding. I had a clothing crisis earlier — NOTHING FITS!! — and called up my friend who, anticipating my clothing crisis, had dresses in various sizes all picked out for me to try on. Went over to her house and had a chat with the bride: “Are you excited?” Her response: “Meh. I just want it over with.” I guess that’s what happens when you’ve already been living in sin with your husband-to-be for six years and are knocked up with his spawn.
The three of us then chatted about the marvel that is spanx. (My one friend is wearing a “spanx scuba suit” as she eloquently put it.)
Being a lady is a blast, innit? Do men have stuff that they do when they get their fancy on? Like special underroos that keeps your junk in place? Sock garters? I don’t know.
Anyway, time to go paint my face.
Have a good evening, y’all.