Respect Authority

To all three readers of Respect Authority, let us extend our deepest apologies. It’s 2010 now, which means a new decade, and a new opportunity to shirk our regular responsibilities in favor of inane blog writing. Consider it my New Year’s resolution. (Well, one of them, third after “Watch less TV” and “Don’t be so hard on yourself if you don’t end up watching less TV.”) And there’s no better way to start off a new year of witty commentary and reality television snark than with a missive defending MTV’s now infamous Jersey Shore.

I know, I know, I’m weeks late in commenting on the work of sheer genius that is Jersey Shore, but it took a few episodes’ worth of contemplation to really nail down what it is about JS that’s so damn appealing. It’s not just the fights, or the inane commentary, or the inability of men on this show not to use the word “fresh” at least once an episode. I mean, it is all of those things (as well as the fact that JS has become so pop-culture relevant that even die-hard haters of reality TV wonder if they’re missing out) but also many more. Here, in three points, is my defense of Jersey Shore.

1. “When it’s time to party, we will party hard.”
One of MTV’s biggest mistakes when it came to every season of The Real World after San Diego was the show’s slow trajectory away from bar fights and towards passive-aggressive work arguments, or utterly boring in-house pranks. Although Real World was always a forum for (ahem) real-world issues—homosexuality, religion, war—those issues were, and still are, best brought up in a loud club, after a lot of alcohol. At least for television purposes. While several of the more recent Real World seasons (Brooklyn and now-airing D.C. being the most flagrant examples) have devolved into mind-numbing self-righteous and too often sober discussions of political and social qualms, I have yet to hear anyone on the Jersey Shore discuss something other than clothes, hair, drinking, clubbing or sex. The vast majority of the show’s footage is of the roommates at bars (to the point that I’ve learned the names of said bars) or on their own roof deck, wooing unsuspecting (or totally suspecting) young ladies into their altogether normal hot tub. This is the stuff of great television.

2. “Watch the lioness, as she contemplates her next victim.”
Though MTV has always been a master of stereotypes—in a truly meta moment, one of the cast members of Real World D.C. correctly predicted that the last arriving housemate would be “the gorgeous black man” and lamented the lack of a “gay guy”—putting a group of the same stereotype in one house and watching them exist together is nothing short of genius. While much of reality television is founded on the notion of different people coming together and interacting, JS joins people that could have very easily become friends anyway. Indeed, to watch the crew interact is akin to some anthropological study: the ease with which they communicate in their unique language, the guido rituals (gym, tanning, laundry, in that order) to which most of them subscribe, the almost immediate tribe-like bond they form with one another. Though plenty of attention has been paid to the negative connotation of “guido” and the show’s supposed affirmation of this stereotype, I personally find the culture more interesting than laughable.

3. “Won’t you be my neighbor?”
This, above all, is the reason I watch Jersey Shore: Despite their questionable fashion choices, limited vocabulary and utter devotion to hooking up, the cast of JS is, for the most part, kind of likeable. The show’s most annoying roommates–the much-maligned Situation, whose desperation when it comes to lady-hunting is downright cringeworthy; and Sammi “Sweetheart,” whose “I’m the sweetest bitch you’ll ever meet” opening-credits line pretty much says it all–are still in my view a rung above even the least annoying people on The Real World. More importantly, they actually seem real. Perhaps by virtue of becoming part of a 20+ year institution, MTV has created something of a monster when it comes to Real World casting: the 20-somethings who ultimately make the cut appear on air with such a sense of self-worth (having made it through umpteen rounds of auditions) that they seem to assume their lives are interesting. By contrast, the Jersey Shore group always seem mildly baffled by their own fame: they’re in it for the sex, free booze and VIP club seating, not to be a part of pop culture history. This is something I can respect.

It should come as no surprise that I’m a fairly big Jersey Shore fan – it’s like the orange-juice concentrate of live-in-a-house-together reality programming, with more hooking up and fighting in one episode than other shows manage in a season. But I think Jersey Shore is a little something extra: it doesn’t create characters by putting otherwise mundane people in a tricked-out house and parading them through overpriced bars and faux careers. Instead, MTV found actual characters, put them in a rather mundane house, and let them handle all the parading. To me, that’s pretty—for lack of a better word—fresh.

I just watched Julie & Julia with my family – a Christmas Eve compromise between It’s a Wonderful Life, which I’ve watched more or less every year since I was five and could probably recite from memory, and Star Wars, which Spike TV is currently playing in marathon and, honestly, never gets old. In fact, despite the movie choice being in actuality a compromise, it’s about as far from my normal decision-making process as possible: an entire film (and a long one, let me tell you) about the literal joys of cooking, as compared with several nostalgic hours of pre-Calista Harrison Ford and animatronic banthas. For someone who owns approximately one pan and has used her oven twice in ten months (and one of those times was to make pot brownies), the choice would have otherwise been fairly obvious.

As it turns out, J&J wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Which isn’t to say it got bad reviews; most critics seemed wowed enough by Meryl Streep as Julia Child that they overlooked the movie’s rather tedious length and borderline endless discussion of actual cooking. In fact, in some deep-seated female part of my being, I guess the movie did make me want to cook a little – only because Amy Adams/Julie made cooking seem like such a respectable alternative to sitting around in your apartment and watching TV. It seems downright productive.

No, this is what really annoys me about Julie & Julia, and movies like it. Shit like that doesn’t really happen. Not to normal people, not often enough that watching it happen isn’t in actuality just as infuriating and depressing as anything else. People don’t dash off to France and magically overcome historical prejudice so they can go on to be one of the most famous chefs of all time. They don’t just happen to have husbands with government jobs that afford them plenty of leisure time to pursue a completely (at least at the time) absurd hobby, or pen pals who just so happen to know major book editors who just so happen to be interested in not only reading, but testing out, cookbooks from otherwise unknown authors.

And back in New York, in 2002, government employees don’t just decide to start a blog and then within a year not only have mastered cooking but also gotten numerous book deal offers, to say nothing of a movie starring, oh, Meryl Streep. People who live in dipshit apartments above pizza places in Long Island City are supposed to CONTINUE living in dipshit apartments above pizza places, or Chinese places, or butcher shops, to make the rest of us (read: me) feel like it’s totally OK to continue living in Brooklyn next to a car wash with a neon sign that sometimes blinks through our window the entire night.

So, in conclusion, fuck you Julia Child, and Julie Powell, for your uncommon success and its alleged ability to inspire (rather than depress) those of us who are forced to sit through a movie about your lives on Christmas Eve. This isn’t even a tale of hope, or of overcoming hardship. This is a story about two relatively happy people who became even happier through a series of fortunate and lucky events. And those stories, like Santa, aren’t real.

The only funny thing Bobby Moynihan has ever really done on SNL:

Also:

THE GOOD

THE BAD

–> After the two-hour premier of Jersey Shore, MTV’s show about eight Italian-Americans spending a summer together in a house in Seaside Heights, N.J. (essentially Real World Jersey), Domino’s pizza told the network to stop airing it’s ads during the show. This is the biggest misunderstanding of your core audience since Kellogg’s stopped endorsing Michael Phelps because he smoked pot. READ MORE.

–> Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that it’s been years since the government has known where Osama Bin Laden is hiding. So basically, until Osama is updating his Twitter feed with “Chillin’ in Afghanistan; opium crop looks gr8,” we’re shit out of luck. READ MORE.

–> Richard Branson unveiled today the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two, a commercial spaceship that will soon carry tourists to space for a mere $200,000 each. The spaceship, which is scheduled to begin test flights next year and start commercial routes by 2012, will carry six passengers and two pilots—which means Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger might have a shot at crash-landing on the moon. READ MORE.

–> The New York Times did a big piece Monday on how car-phone makers promoted the devices back in the 1960s, even while knowing the risks of driving with one’s hands otherwise occupied. A note to the Times: the 60’s weren’t exactly a model for best practices in advertising (See: cigarettes, Spam and anything directed at women). READ MORE.

–> Unilever is recalling some 10 million cans of its Slim-Fast ready-to-drink products in North America because of a possible bacterial contamination that makes people who drink the product throw up. …In unrelated news, sales of Slim-Fast were through the roof Monday. READ MORE.

“Sometimes writing is difficult. Sometimes writing is like pounding a brick wall with a ball-peen hammer in the hope that the barricade will evolve into a revolving door. Sometimes writing is like talking to a stranger who’s exactly like yourself in every possible way, only to realize that this stranger is boring as shit. In better moments, writing is the opposite of difficult–it’s as if your fingers meander arbitrarily in crosswise patterns and (suddenly) you find yourself reading something you didn’t realize you already knew. Most of the time, the process falls somewhere in between. But there’s one kind of writing that’s always easy: Picking out something obviously stupid and reiterating how stupid it obviously is. This is the lowest form of criticism, easily accomplished by anyone. And for most of my life, I have tried to avoid this. In fact, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time searching for the underrated value in ostensibly stupid things. I understand Turtle’s motivation and I would have watched Medellinin the theater. I read Mary Worth every day for a decade. I’ve seen Korn in concert three times and liked them once. I went to The Day After Tomorrow on opening night. I own a very expensive robot that doesn’t do anything. I am open to the possibility that everything has metaphorical merit, and I see no point in sardonically attacking the most predictable failures within any culture. I always prefer to do the opposite, even if my argument becomes insane by necessity.

But sometimes I can’t.

Sometimes I experience something so profoundly idiotic–and so deeply universal–that I cannot find any contrarian perspective, even for the sole purpose of playful contrarianism. These are not the things that are stupid for what they are; these are the things that are stupid for what they supposedly reflect about human nature. These are the things that make me feel completely alone in the world, because I cannot fathom how the overwhelming majority of people ignores them entirely. These are not real problems (like climate change or African genocide), because those issues are complex and multifaceted; they’re also not intagible personal hypocrisies (like insincerity or greed), because those qualities are biological and understandable. These are things that exist only because they exist. We accept them, we give them a social meaning, and they become part of how we live. Yet these are the things that truly illustrate how ridiculous mankind can be. These are the things that prove just how confused people are (and will always be), and these are the things that are so stupid that they make me feel nothing. Not sadness. Not anger. Not guilt. Nothing.

These are the stupidest things our society has ever manufactured.”

-Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur

So much going on in the news these days, like Obama schooling Chinese children on how awesome it is to live in an uncensored country, and three-year-old Suri Cruise already being more adept at wearing heels than I am.  Here’s a Monday morning roundup.

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Megan Fox managed to once again perpetuate the idea of herself as an intellectual and under-challenged actress who was duped by the type-casting slobs of Hollywood into limiting herself career-wise to Michael Bay action flicks and thinly veiled soft-core porn horror films. Sorry Megan, you can talk to as many New York Times reporters as you want, women will still hate you.

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Time Inc. is sponsoring “Selling Detroit,” a contest in which five advertising agencies are producing campaigns to encourage young and creative types to consider Detroit as a place to live/work. Somehow I feel like they’d have better luck just…actually selling Detroit.

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Courteney Cox, David Arquette and Neve Campbell are all on board for Scream 4, written by Kevin Williamson, the genius behind Scream and Scream 2 (not sarcasm, I love those movies). I’m just not sure which is more indicative of a career plateau–starring in an ABC show about an older woman gaming on younger men, or returning to the same role you played 13 years ago.

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Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, who went down in flames after revealing an extra-marital affair with a man (and who also wrote a book where he admitted to doing dudes in “book stores and rest stops”), is currently training to become an Episcopal priest. …No commentary necessary.

“I’ve had a lot of fun with women, and I’m not ashamed of it. The problem is that I also love a well-endowed man. But just because I enjoy women doesn’t mean I’m allowed to have affairs in my relationship. I learned through talking with my therapist that it is still cheating even if it’s with girls, so there’s a rule there.”

-Fergie, on her husband’s alleged affair with a stripper

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“Thinking about how many people I want to kill today, including myself….I hate these people. I want to kick the shit out of them. They’re idiots. …They revere me as God. Even though I hate them, they still love me….I can’t wait until it rains again so I can splash more people.”

-Facebook posts from NYC bus driver Jeremy Philhower, who hit and killed a college student last week

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“These universities are saying, ‘Our policy is nondiscrimination, so we’re not going to adopt a technology we know for sure discriminates against blind students.’”

-A National Federation for the Blind spokesman on schools that have stopped buying Amazon Kindles because they cannot be used by blind students

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Washington responsibilities “were incompatible with running a full-fledged, full-throated Weiner-style campaign.”

-New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, on why he dropped out of the NYC mayor’s race

As an avid reader and even more avid frequenter of bookstores, I’ve stumbled across Gregory Maguire’s Wicked more than a few times in the past several years. Particularly after the book was translated into a Broadway musical–which I am seeing for the first time this weekend–it became fairly impossible to avoid seeing Maguire’s various fairy-tale remakes on shelves everywhere. Only recently, prompted in fact by my imminent trek to Broadway, did I bother picking it up.

Here’s the thing: I really didn’t want to like Wicked, and for no particular reason. I suppose some part of me thought the very idea of revisiting stories already told was corny, to say nothing of a bit of a cop-out on the part of an author. I thought the book would be a cliche, the same way I have no intention of reading Stephenie Meyer’s fifth Twilight book, which re-tells Book 1 through the eyes of another character. In my world, where at any given time some 200 books wait, unread, in my apartment, there’s no time for repetition.

So extra kudos go to Maguire for manging to tell an excellent story that not only impressed me, but changed my mind entirely. What The Wizard of Oz dispels by way of hokey morals and annoying canines, Wicked re-offers through a much more somber lens: the story centers around Elphaba, a resident of Oz with green skin, who later becomes what we know as the Wicked Witch of the West. But more importantly, the story focuses on the political and religious inclinations of all the various people of Oz; it touches on questions of royalty and hierarchy, on political unrest, revolution and ruling with an eye to the divine. It brings up issues of good and evil, right and wrong, and guilt and forgiveness. In short, it’s a very serious book that just so happens to star a central character of its less-serious predecessor. Also, there’s sex. And dirty jokes. And violence.

So if anyone out there still reads books, this one comes highly recommended. I suspect it’s more worth your time than, say, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

Only Spencer Pratt would have another friend named Spencer.