On Sixth Grade, and Fitting In

I can tell you the exact moment I could no longer be myself. 7:25 AM on the first day of sixth grade, waiting in the cafeteria to go to homeroom. I was standing against the wall, minding my own business, thinking about how excited I was for the Super Nintendo to come out or something, and my friend Roger came over to me, laughing. "What are you doing with your socks, man?"

"Huh? Wearing them?"

"No, you can't wear them like that." But then Roger, a good guy now and then, pulled his tube socks all the way up just below his knees in a show of solidarity.

What? Why did this matter? Who decided that? It was fine when I wore them this way in May, on the last day of fifth grade. No one told me it would be any different here. Oh, but it was. I looked around at the guys snickering at me. They all had socks just like mine, but pushed down to their ankles. I quickly copied them and went to class.

As the year went on, I began noticing some guys were different from me. People talked about them when they weren't there; usually good, sometimes bad, but either way, they cared. I had friends, sure. Good friends. They would become great friends, and to this day are some of my best friends. But they were all dudes. These boys who were different, they had the attention of girls. The girls would laugh when these boys walked by. The teachers seemed to already know them. They did things with each other outside of school, like sports. They knew each other's parents.

In short, they were popular.

What was this thing, popularity? How did it happen? Could I get it? I studied these guys. What they wore, how they acted, how they cut their hair. How did they get the keys to this club? Maybe because they tucked their shirts in. OK. I tucked my shirt in. My friend Keith: "You look different. Why is your shirt tucked in?"

"What? No reason. I don't know." I untucked it. This was a covert operation and I almost got made.

My wardrobe had been haphazard thus far. All t-shirts, with bold colors and designs and characters largely surf-inspired (yes, Tennessee is quite landlocked; I don't know either). Neons. Acid-washed jeans. The more pockets the better. I liked pockets. No one told me to, I just did. All this had to go out the window. No more surfing werewolves or lizards saying "Be Cool." I had to keep my head down. You couldn't stand out. That wasn't how you got into the club; I had that much figured out. I tried to blend in to the crowd and disappear while I studied their methods. I had no idea who decided this all mattered now. I just knew it did.

I spent the next several years keeping my head down, trying to play the game. I didn't know who I was supposed to be in order to win, but I knew it wasn't whoever I already was. I had to become something different. That boy got a laugh by talking a certain way. I'll do that. Those boys wear shirts with hoods. I'll wear nothing but shirts with hoods. Duck Head shorts seem to matter. Expensive shoes for sports I don't play, endorsed by people I've never heard of (sorry Mom). Someone said I walk funny. How do I get my feet to point straight? Why are they so big? A lifetime lost because I slouch. Childless, alone, because I don't wear the right shirt. I have to get this right.

And through it all, my friends remained. They didn't care what I wore. We liked the same stuff. We watched movies, played video games, explored the woods around our houses, pretended we were fighting off a Communist alien invasion. Russia was still the bad guy back then, and apparently the bugs attacking from Yirax studied Marx before landing.

Then finally, high school. Sliding down the far side of the hill of puberty. That hairy, greasy, awkward hill. I befriended actual girls (gasp). I figured out what my actual tastes were, and what I thought about the world, and how to fix it. Then one day, I got a t-shirt for getting good grades or something. An awful t-shirt, with a lineup of people holding encouraging signs. One of them looked like Bill Cosby. And I wore it. I wore it proudly and often, and people laughed. But they laughed with me. And I discovered the power of irony, and not really giving a fuck.

And here I am, in my apartment in Brooklyn I share with my wife. I still talk to my friends from sixth grade, and ninth grade, and grad school. I pay bills, I worry about money, I try to create things. I vacuum. I don't really think about that club any more. There's probably a different doorman and a whole new set of keys.

But sometimes I wonder if I'm wearing the right shirt.

Rebecca Black, Act 2--I'm sorry

I truly hate to talk about her again, but Rebecca Black is helping me prove a point. Or at least, Miley Cyrus' reaction to her is.

Black is recording the inevitably disappointing follow-up to "Friday," "LOL." To which Ms. Cyrus says "It should be harder to be an artist...you shouldn’t just be able to put a song on YouTube and go out on tour." Right. You should have a one-hit-wonder stage dad. Not to mention that in saying this she's also indicting Justin Bieber. Which hey, I'm fine with, but I doubt that was her intention.

I love this. It's just fulfilling the point I made in my original post about Rebecca Black. In being as visible as the leading pop artists by spending way less money and sucking way more, she's laying bare all the gross machinery that makes pop music tick.

As a fan of "real" music (wherein real=anything in any genre that comes from a place of emotional truth and at least some performer authorship), pop all sounds the same to me and that sound is terrible. I understand it has its place. Not every song has to mean something or change lives. Sometimes it can just be fun. But, just like bland multi-camera sitcoms and 98% of reality TV, mediocre has come to dominate the medium.

So it's pretty awesome to me when someone like Miley Cyrus, who is seriously just as terrible to me as Rebecca Black, gets a little uncomfortable when her territory is threatened like this.

Rebecca Blacks of the world, come forward! Let your mechanical voices be heard! Flood the market and take it down like the Titanic! Celine Dion sucks too!

Stray Musings. Very Stray.

Did the Romans so gladly bear witness to the end of their society? Did they pay millions of denarii to Visigoths and Ostrogoths who weren't known for very much, other than being known, to prance around in their underwear and drunkenly fight in the Coliseum? Did they begrudge every coin given to beggars by the state, while gladly flushing away thousands of pounds of gold to the Senate so its members could maintain their villae outside the city?

Did someone ask these same questions fifty years ago? Will someone do the same in 2061? Does any of it matter?

Most importantly, who do you think is going to win Dancing with the Stars?

On the Metaphysical Implications of Rebecca Black's "Friday"

First of all, I'm sorry. You're either blissfully unaware of this song's existence, or it's already rattling around in your brain. Either way, I'm about to put it there because there's no way you can't watch this video:



Again, sorry.

You may notice I've avoided flavor-of-the-week pop culture stories for a while here, but good god how could I not address this? It's the forerunner of a sonic invasion by Ark Music Factory, which has received notice from media outlets as highfalutin' as Salon.com. From what I can tell, there are about fifteen differently-shaded copies of Rebecca Black waiting behind her for their big ironic break. Ark has cornered the tween music market using the same approach as SyFy original movies: make a product as quickly and cheaply as possible, a faint copy of its better-made peers, and just market the hell out of the thing. Profit margins people, profit margins. These guys have already made their money back from YouTube views alone. As of now, it's at 7.8 million. According to Entertainment Weekly, this morning it was 5 million. To give you a little perspective and make you hate the world more, The Cure's "Friday I'm in Love" has 200,000 less views. By the time you read this that number will probably have grown by 2 million.

So clearly it's a terrible song. I mean just awful. In malls across America, "talent scouts" are scamming eager, morally ambivalent parents by telling them their kid has a great look and would you mind working with us for $500. If you were to actually go along with that, you'd end up with a better result than this song and video. But you're smart folks. I don't need to explain why it's bad.

And dear mechanical little Rebecca. Yes, she's right out of a Philip K. Dick story. Yes, there was more life in the empty eye sockets of that rotting deer I found in the woods one time. But this isn't about her. She seems like a perfectly decent kid. Most girls her age shouldn't be pop stars. That's fine. I probably wouldn't look any better doing that. Which is why I'm not.

The main defendants in the impending trial for crimes against humanity will be Ark Music Factory and Mr. and Mrs. Black. Assuming of course Rebecca wasn't spawned in a Matrix pod, or the bowels of the Master Mold like all the other Sentinels (mutants, avoid her just in case). While they should of course be punished for their sociopathic lack of empathy for their fellow man, I'm glad this is happening. In so fully embodying everything that is foul and soulless about pop music today, they've brought its death that much closer. In paying attention to this, people will start seeing Britney and Katy Perry trying to coast by on the same bullshit, spending far more money, and they'll lose interest. The world will become a better place. I just have to figure out which seat I'll take in my friend's car. Front or back? Better make up my mind. It's Friday. Tomorrow's Saturday. Party.

Now, how do we defend stand-up comedy from the same assault?

Sign of a True Addict

Standing in the coffee aisle, I was faced with a dilemma. I've stopped shopping at the Atlantic Center Target because it sullies the good name of Target and does not deserve my money. But oh, the prices. $8 for a two pound bucket of Maxwell House. Said bucket is $13 at Steve's C-Town down here in my hood.

What's this? Cafe Caribe? $7 you say? Good price. What if I don't like it? I'll be stuck with two pounds of coffee I can't drink.

Wait, that's right. I'm a total addict. If it came down to it I'd dig out yesterday's grounds and filter them with a dirty sock to get my fix. Cafe Caribe, welcome to my household!

EDIT: And it's not bad.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Love My Shows

Look, I could sit here and blog-snipe shows like Two and a Half Men or Mike & Molly or whatever focus-grouped vanilla sitcoms are walking all over 30 Rock in the ratings. It would be fun, and it would be easy, and over time it would take a few years off my life.

Here's the bottom line of it: we (wherein "we" refers to anyone with some sort of discernment) are lucky to be entertained by anything on television. The entire medium is just a vehicle for advertising. Read that sentence again, knowing that it is not in fact hyperbole. TV exists to broadcast commercials. TV shows are things companies use to trick us into watching those commercials. Commercials make broadcast television free, and basic cable cheaper. The fact that you laugh at all or care what happens to someone in the seven minute segment between commercials is kind of a little miracle.

If you take a minute to actually look at TV ratings, you might be surprised*. For example, 30 Rock spent a lot of time opposite Shit My Dad Says. One is a brainchild of a beloved comedienne and one of the most talented writers in the business. The other is based on a Twitter feed. Average viewership of that Twitter feed: 4 million people. 30 Rock: maybe 4 million on a good night, could be closer to 2. Meanwhile, that beast that no one understands, Two and a Half Men, eats up 10 million people. With a rerun.

So I came to a conclusion, which has helped me maintain my sanity and quit worrying about how such a predictable, lowest-common-denominator heatseeker like that performs. Most people just don't care about TV. It's kind of my job, on a few levels. But most people come home, they're tired, they want to see pretty people say funny things and not really pay attention. Or they want to see people like them get into scrapes just like they do, and make it funny. Or they want to see functionally retarded gorilla people get hammered and swap STDs. Whatever.

We're all just being sold something.

*Don't get me started on whether we have an accurate measure of the effect of commercials, or how many people truly do watch commercials. I'm sure many books have been written on the subject with conflicting conclusions.

My Nickname

I've only ever had one nickname in my life: Butch.

In seventh grade I got into a fight. In morning homeroom, a friend of mine was playing around, so I playfully pushed him, and he punched me in the mouth. I got him into a headlock and hit the top of his head a couple times. We both immediately cried. No harm done. The teacher wasn't even in the room, so nothing came of it.

Til first period.

Mr. Ramsey, my social studies teacher and one of the best teachers I ever had, may he rest in peace, stuck his head into my math class while everyone was still getting to their rooms and settling. He pointed at me. "You. Butch. Come out here." Naturally everyone in our grade knew what had happened ten minutes prior, and word got to Mr. Ramsey. I knew, and he knew I knew.

I went out into the hallway where he was standing with Mrs. Wilson, my English teacher and also one of the best teachers I ever had (seventh grade was a good year). "Did you get into a fight this morning?"

"Yeah, sort of."

"What were you thinking? Don't ever do that again."

That was it. Except everyone in my math class heard him call me Butch. It stuck immediately, and I was fine with it. Mostly for the irony. I'm kind of nerdy now. You should have seen me in junior high. How many kids called Butch won their school spelling bee? As we got older, fewer people still used it, but at least three people signed my senior yearbook addressing it to Butch.

So naturally when we got online in 1996 I had to come up with an AOL screen name. Ah, AOL. Remember how many trial discs were floating around back then? If only we could have harnessed them for energy...

Well, what name could I possibly use other than Butch? Specifically, BUTCH22054. For some insane reason, Dad got it into his head that we needed to use all caps for our names (DELRT, CELTICC736, screaming our handles at strangers as if AOL were some virtual retirement home). And of course hundreds of people I would soon meet had claimed various forms of Butch, so when he put in BUTCH2 the program suggested BUTCH22054.

Welcome! You've got mail! My, the gay community on AOL is certainly friendly. And why are they all gravitating towards me? What's this, someone sent me a picture. Of a fully frontally nude Brad Pitt in a cowboy hat. I don't remember that movie.

I feel I should mention that in the halcyon days on the rising edge of the dot-com bubble, we were blissfully naive. The various strangers chatting me up were surely all perfectly polite homosexuals who were misled by my nickname. And funny, isn't it, how the name works for both sexes? It didn't matter that I was just 16. There was no "To Catch a Predator" yet. JonBenet Ramsey was still alive. For a little while. And "alive" inasmuch as a child beauty pageant contestant can be alive. Not "alive" like normal people. The internet was more like Main Street, less like the filthiest darkest hallway of Studio 54.

For some reason this flood of attention from the gays ebbed after a few months, never to flow back. I had to assume they were all meeting somewhere, regularly, conferring about new potential members. "No, no, BUTCH22054 is some straight kid. But have you met BUTCH22153? He is FABulous." I wasn't an actor yet. Perhaps if that had been on my profile, the attention would have lingered a bit longer.

I kept the screen name into college, where we learned you could mainline the internet without the throttle of AOL. AIM was always on, though, where you could find me chatting with my friends a few dorm rooms down. It wasn't until the proto-hipster LiveJournal era that I felt the need to change my online name to something less shouty, without numbers.

But if you were to see me walking down the street today and shouted "Butch!" I'd turn around. All thanks to Mr. Ramsey.