Dealing with the End of the World

                We got lucky: the end of the world falls on a weekend. Imagine if the end of the world occurred on a work day. Forget it, we wouldn’t be prepared. You’d be judged in the worst possible environment. All those things you wanted to do, to get all the depravity out of your system before being raptured, are inaccessible. The most rotten thing you might do at work before the end of the world is check your email on company time. 

                Every few years the end of the world is proclaimed. Various now-dead people and civilizations predicted the end of the world. They picked some obscure, far away date to make people felt better about how things were going. “Don’t mind that famine” they’d say “the world isn’t going to end for long time”. I wonder why we look to these groups for guidance when they did such a poor job at pinpointing their own demise. Shoot, some of the groups whose advice we take seriously never even knew what a wheel was.

                The apocalypse occurs on a fairly regular basis. In case the one on Saturday doesn’t get us, maybe the 2012 one will. Or, if we get lucky in 2012, perhaps there’s another long-dead civilization that predicted our demise in 2020. If all else fails turn to Nostradamus who probably didn’t predict anything, besides knowing what a buzzkill he was at parties. 

                Dealing with the end of the world can be tough. Should I max out all my credit cards? Should I move to rural Montana and stock up on 4 tons worth of Spam. To prevent you from making a life-changing and potentially embarrassing commitment I have some things you could do without looking foolish. 

1.       Go to a Party

When in doubt about what to do (and this is true in any situation) go to a party. By having the apocalypse on Saturday, you can crash on Sunday in case civilization ends. It is remarkably easy to sleep off a hangover when there is no noise. No traffic, no trains, no toilet flushing and no sounds of a vacuum cleaner to bother you. Of course, it being a party, you may also want to

2.       Have sex

Since you’re so worried about the end of the world, it is important to relax. Perhaps at that party you might meet Mr. or Mrs. Right (or Right Now). Remembering the important life lesson you learned from the movies, you not-so-subtly make your move. Don’t worry about the passion; it’s the end of the world baby. In case the world doesn’t end you at the very least had some fun, got some sex. Losing your virginity at what might be the end of the world isn’t a terrible thing either. “Independence Day” was one of the most philosophical films to touch upon sex during the apocalypse. A minor character cooing says “You don’t want to die a virgin do you?” Using all your charm is required in order to effectively pull off that line. 

3.       Drink

If you know or think it is going to be the end of the world, go all out. Don’t worry about having a hangover as you’ll be dead. When the world doesn’t end, you’ll probably be wishing it did. Carry this out. Even Mormons could hit the bottle with little repercussion as they were under the impression it would all be over. Drinking often (but not always) brings merriness and good cheer. Once you realize it is the end of the world, don’t you want to end it on a good note?

4.       Start a Cult

What better time to start a cult than an alleged ‘end of times’? Cults pay big money. Generally speaking, try to have your cult members from the middle to upper middle class cult. Many cults mooch off of their members’ money. If you do it right you’ll get to ‘communal’ status, where everybody shares everything. Avoid a really creepy or violent cult. Have a near-believable status. Wear matching clothes; preferably choose something which rides the line between ironic and stupid. Keep in mind outsiders won’t get it. Once you explain your cult was created to prepare for the end of the world, it makes much more sense.

5.       Take a Nap

Nothing says “Bring it on” like sleeping through the end of the world. The world usually doesn’t end, or at least hasn’t yet. You can take a nap while the world allegedly ends. In the rare case that the world does end at least you have a fairly pleasant journey towards death, unlike all those people screaming as they plunge to their deaths. At least you got a good night’s rest. 

6.       Surf the Internet

Call this a ‘lame’ idea. Go ahead. I dare you. But if you are reading this, you probably spend a vast quantity of time surfing the internet. Twitter would be trending “#endoftheworld”. You can use that tag to mock everyone else who thought it was ending. But if the world does end, you’ll lose internet connectivity at some point. 

7.       Create a really weird play-list

This is tough. How do you capture the destruction of the entire world, everything you’ve ever known in a single play-list? Even for someone who has listened to a great deal of music like me, it is a tough problem. You could decide to make it ironic, with lots of corny giant riffs. Perhaps “November Rain” could make it in there. Movie soundtracks may fit the bill. Get some really loud classical pieces and put them together. To do it more tastefully, try to include quiet, mildly depressing pieces. For a party, have a bunch of dance tracks from bands like L.F.O, Daft Punk, Justice, Lords of Acid, DJ Sprinkles, etc. In case people think you’re being too weird, explain you’re confused by how to approach the end of the world. 

                As the end of the world will be on May 21^st I’ll be personally taking some of this advice myself. I hope you decide to use some of these suggestions (for they are only suggestions) and mix them with your own ideas. Together we’ll get through this non-end of the world. Everything is going to be okay.

The Road **Warning: Spoilers** **Warning: Sucks Hard**

Usually for movies, I have one of two options:

1.       Mock it by re-writing the summary. Usually this means I either haven’t seen, or am familiar enough with it to ruin the actual movie’s premise. 

2.       I thoroughly enjoyed it and want you to see it as well.

I’m not much of a movie person though, so if you ask me if I’ve seen a certain movie, my answer tends to be “No”. Not sure why this is, I attribute it to the general blandness of movies. They either possess the same qualities they always have solved in roughly the same manner. Rarely is there a movie so uniformly terrible that I have to warn you.

“The Road” is such a movie. Adapted from a book that reeks of pop-culture awfulness, the movie only expands on this weary cliché of survival following the apocalypse. Generally I’m a big fan of the end of the world, and zombies in general, enjoying their campy nature. Nothing in the movie is remotely like that; it is an absolute bore of a movie.

                After the end of the world, a father and son trudge through the wrecked hell scape of this world, searching for meaning. Somehow they turn a story about the end of the world and cannibals into a father-son bonding film. The dialogue revolts me, it is so inauthentic. Constantly he refers to his father as “Papa”. Obviously these two are from Italy in the 19^th century, because people rarely, if ever, speak this way. 

                Maybe I’m just nit-picking, but when there’s so little dialogue in the movie, you’d expect the little that’s actually there to be good. Sadly, that’s not the case, and if the dialogue wasn’t bad enough, you get to hear the father’s internal thoughts, which are uninteresting as well. What makes this almost forgivable is the beautiful, gray, bleakness that the landscape achieves. It is so devoid of life, it is excellent. Shame it is just the background to this miserable bonding movie disguised as ruminations on the end of the world.

                Honestly, I saw this with friends who read the book. They told me the book is better. I doubt them. Upon saying how much they enjoyed the book, they told me it helped them get over losing their IPOD while they traveled in Italy. If you need to think about the end of the world in order to realize that the loss of an IPOD isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, you have serious problems. 

                Everything in the movie is so annoying wimpy. Yeah, I know, it’s a bonding film, but there’s so little to enjoy. It is as if he took the two genres I like (end of world and zombie) and bled them dry, leaving a dried out carcass. Maybe some of Cormac McCarthy’s other stuff is better but this story doesn’t convince me of that. Or, more likely, the director completely butchered the shit out of the book, kind of like what the cannibals do in the movie. 

                Below are some various screenshots from the movie. I’ve added Tao Lin’s trademark phrase ‘Seems Bleak’ in an attempt to lighten what is otherwise a fairly worthless movie. Hopefully the powerful picture coupled with the distant phrase will make you think about the light-hearted goofy nature of a burned-out shell of society, like Detroit. 

Poetry Review: I am like October when I am dead

Poetry confuses me. It is one of those art forms where the purpose is often obscured. Usually the power resides with the reader than the writer. I have a few poet friends and I’ve mentioned how anxious I feel going through it. How should I react to this? Is it even good that I can relate to it? Am I supposed to understand what’s going on? Is this even a place for a poetry review, since most of my writing has to do with music?

I decided to try and push aside my natural prejudices towards this art form as I dove into Steve Roggenbuck’s chapbook “i am like october when i am dead”.  Apparently this poet had randomly been following me on twitter, with rather cryptic, bizarre tweets, so I decided to return the favor by reading his more full length work. 

His poetry reads like twitter poetry, since most of it is very brief. Most (but not all) of these poems are within the 140 character limit required. I liked some of these poems more than others, since I felt the minimal style worked well for him. Below is each poem, followed by my reaction. Note everything is lower case in his writing. And if you’re familiar with the likes of Tao Lin and his ilk, then this may be somewhat familiar to you, tone-wise. 

1.

i dont care about reading a poem

who do you think i am, robert frost?

i have never been in the woods and i hate walking

-Reaction: I thought this ended up being a tad bit too cute. Steve acknowledges the reader’s hesitancy in wanting to read poetry, but it came off as a bit too silly for me. Actually it took me another go before I decided to read the other ones.

2.

god help me im throwing my neighbor off a building

-Reaction: Liked this one more than the previous one, but it still made me anxious about what awaited me. 

3.

i drink ten gallons of rice milk and pull the headlights out of my car hood

now they are way gone

-Reaction: This one mixes what I think is his sense of humor with strange detail. Using “way gone” instead of “gone” gives it a funnier vibe. I started to become more interested in it, though I acknowledge beginning anything is always tricky.

4.

there is a show on the history channel about the mayan doomsday prophecy

jupiter is in the south of the sky

i love you in the south like the hurricanes of Jupiter

-Reaction: As a person who takes great interest in doomsday, I liked the meshing with it and love. There’s actually been writing about the destructive powers of love, so I feel the poem works on that level. 

5.

you are gone

for lunch i had peanuts

-Reaction: I like his shorter stuff. This seems to flow nicely from the previous passage, giving it a sense of continuity. Or I might just be reading into it too much. 

6.

i have two sunflowers wilting on my bookshelf

thats it

thats all

the poem is done, get out

-Reaction: Again, the referencing of itself bothers me a bit. I’m not sure if I’m the kind of audience he’s trying to appeal to though. Had he kept just the first sentence or simply removed the last, I would’ve liked it more. It is kind of strange for me to ask for edits in such a short thing. Oh well. 

7.

climbing onto this church

thank god

carrying a giant rake with me to scare walking individuals

-Reaction: This is funny. I enjoyed the image of carrying a giant rake. 

8.

last february i drove home from the library next to finch fieldhouse, sigur rós was on the cd player in the car with a tape adapter

i saw an elephant walking out of a circus truck into the parking lot of finch fieldhouse

-Reaction: Apparently the Sigur Ros reference was to improve the emotional content of the poem, since he felt for the poor Elephant. But my music snob tendencies went into overdrive once he said that the CD he was listening to was their “()” album, which I disliked. Ignorance is bliss I guess. 

9.

to my nephew on his birthday

i will choke your dad

i dont care

im not afraid

-Reaction: For whatever reason, this reminded me of the Doors song, perhaps it is that last line. Though he wrote “im” my mind reads it only as “I am”. It feels defiant. 

10.

if you call me, i wont answer

i am sitting under the moon inside of a wheelbarrow

-Reaction: Enjoyed this quite a bit. Despite the short length, it conveyed to be a sense of childhood, where our emotions take hold of logic. That still happens as adults, but the wheelbarrow confirmed it could only apply to kids. 

11.

i am like october when i am dead

there is my hand

i am like the killers of people

-Reaction: This one is bizarre. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about it. 

12.

i asked my dad if the corn harvest is over

it is way over, my dad said

-Reaction: I had no idea about this one. I didn’t grow up on a farm. Apparently Steve did according to his youtube video thing. His voice sounds American, he looks American, and he probably picked corn or milked cows or whatever in his rural town. I’m not as American as Steve Roggenbuck. Sorry. 

13.

the hymnal at my grandmothers funeral says 'wives be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the lord'

five months ago i saw a video of a dog being thrown into a garbage compactor

-Reaction: The darkest one in here. I don’t know whether or not I like it. Since it leaves me so confused, I’ll say that’s probably a good thing. 

14.

oh, you have a smock on

-Reaction: This reminds me of Ernest Hemingway’s six word story. Obviously, Steve’s take is lighter. The choice of the word “smock” gives it a playful connotation, like little children or painters. I enjoyed this one a lot. 

15.

i rented a movie and recorded over it with two hours of myself

on the video i am shouting compliments at my family

i burn my car on purpose

it is january

i greet myself at the beginning of a great career

-Reaction: I liked bits of it. Steve mentioned in the commentary that the last line was re-phrasing Walt Whitman’s line of “I greet you at the beginning of a great career” (via his own commentary on his writing). This one feels chaotic, since he’s doing so many strange things. 

Overall: I liked this. Had he removed some of the more coy parts of it, such as the poem referencing itself, I might have enjoyed it a bit more but this might be a personal preference of mine. Hopefully I get to see more material of his at a later point in time. Since he seems keen on having this available to the public, it won’t be long before we see more from him. I’m strongly considering actually ordering one of these chapbooks from him. The use of space in the chapbook and on the website allows you to place your own ideas into them, various doodles and notes. Please keep up the work, good sir!

I listen to bands that don’t even exist yet

The expression the wearer has is not necessary, but it helps.

Yes, you know those kids who seem to listen to the coolest bands you’ve never heard of? Well, there’s now a time machine created, allowing those very children to travel forward in time to be at the fringe of all the hippest, most relevant trends. Then they come back from the future ready to lord over all others their extensive knowledge on bands that haven’t been born. Preposterous you might say. I thought so too until I saw the future of music. Let me try to give you this rare ‘sneak peak’ into the future.

Obviously there are a few problems with forward time travel. For one, you can’t exactly go back in time because that would mess up the whole time/space continuum. Also, all those really memorable ‘I was there’ moments would go out the window, and that can’t be allowed to occur. Rather, the preferred way of doing things is to say ‘I was already here’. If back in time this happened, we’d be pretty doomed. The loft holding the Velvet Underground’s first performance wouldn’t be big enough. And after you’ve been there you can only go back from whence you came. Waiting too long will force you to live in the future forever. 

Powered by an assorted amount of rare vinyl records in a Red Hook basement, this Time Machine has a few amazing talents. By seeing into the future, you could theoretically try to alter the world, but generally music snobs do too much music-related research to ever make this a serious issue. Rather, a bigger talent is the ability to purchase relevant merchandise and wear it to impress the other hip lads. 

A few things happen in the future that make sense but might not seem obvious to the casual listener. I’ll explain them as best as I can.

1.       In the future, Carsick Cars from Beijing, China are referred as the creators of the indie rock scene in China.

2.       In the future, there are a million Jaap Blonk cover bands. Apparently in the future the only people who breed in large numbers are noise heads. They live in secluded villages in the Idaho wilderness waiting for the world to end and brew their own Kombucha. Most of them are actually really nice.

3.       The world does end but the soundtrack is mostly Lady Gaga, which is a bit of a let-down. It is meant ‘ironically’ I think. Or rather, I hope.

4.       Nostalgia for the 90s occurs. I was right about this. It is mostly grunge based unfortunately, but there are pockets of shoegaze and Post Rock. The most relevant city in the US becomes Auburn, Alabama which creates a band to rival Slint’s weirdness. They are called “The Okie Dookie Corral” and it consists of former Jesuit priests. 

5.       Detroit becomes the center for the highest level of art. It blooms and flourishes following the end of the world. The end of the world doesn’t really end the world but rather marks a new era. That era is kind of like how we live now but with more art, thin-crust pizza and a steadier supply of blog-gable MP3s. 

6.       After the end of the world, the genre I created “Polka-Noise” really takes off. 

I’ve seen the future with my two eyes and am vaguely indifferent to what happens. Just as an FYI, if you ever decide to follow through and visit the Time Machine’s keeper, make sure to take your shoes off before you enter her house. She’s really particular about it. 

After you’ve traveled forward in time, you get a free t-shirt as well. Use it wisely.

An American Hero: Ghost Writer for the Situation's New Book

 

Ghostwriters are anonymous people, floating around, hoping to earn enough money to pay the rent for a while. Usually they are decent writers who are simply working on their own stuff which might be a harder (or longer sell). Just because they have been unable to achieve commercial success doesn’t mean that they are failures. Far from it, they are troopers, continuing to slog through the muck, even working on books they aren’t interested in, in order to make ends meet.

That brings us to the Ghost Writer at hand. “Here’s the Situation” a book supposedly written by the Situation, one Mike Sorrentino of “The Jersey Shore” fame, works better than most ghost written books. Besides just having an over-the-top main character basically bragging throughout 153 pages, there’s that irony. And it is the ghost writer’s complete distain and open mockery of the Situation that brings this book up beyond bathroom book reading.

Irony has been done to death in writing of late. Usually this may be in part to its easy use. By keeping an ironic distance between yourself and your subject matter, you can sort of say “Just Kidding” in case the effort fails. It is a vulnerable sort of technique. Here though, it shines like pure gold.

Above you can see the ridiculous sort of language used. This one is about fist pumping and it even is helpful enough to include diagrams, in case you were too stupid to figure out how fist pumping works. By using words like “corpuscle” and “Battle it, bro” the ghost writer allows us to be in on the joke of “this guy is a total douche bag, isn’t he?” while still making it good enough for the Situation to approve. 

Most likely, we’ll never know who wrote this intentionally hilarious book. Whenever there’s a ghost writer for a subject so vapid and devoid of anything resembling intelligence, a non-disclosure agreement is signed. That means the publisher knows that it is an ironic, stupid, tacky book, and you can giggle to yourself about it, but you can never let anyone know.

That’s perfectly OK though. Heavy irony works best with the only two groups likely to buy this book:

1.       People who truly love the Jersey Shore. These people don’t understand how truly sad they are, and why there are people “hating” on them for being so ridiculous. Usually these people live in some alternate universe where people like “The Situation” are revered like folk heroes.

2.       People who truly hate the Jersey Shore. They will purchase the book purely for ironic purposes. At parties, they’ll read it to groups of friends who are also in on the joke. Everybody will get a good laugh as they drink PBR and watch awful 80s films, like anything with Ernest. 

Going on Amazon or searching for the book, you already see the two sides lining up. Most of the internet consists of the latter group, so you’re more likely to see such things as “Signs of the Apocalypse” and “When will his fifteen minutes be up?” My favorite has to be the Amazon tag for this as “euthanasia”. 

The ghost writer is so good that he has answers for this lazy criticism: “Haters: It’s been more than 15 minutes. The apocalypse is a multi-step process, bitches.” So the ghost writer knows how important it is that this succeeds. It may or may not; depending on how much of the Situation’s fan base can read. Sometimes I wonder whether or not the Situation is self-aware about how ridiculous he is, like some sort of meta-Joaquin Phoenix kind of deal. Reading the Amazon description of the book doesn’t exactly allay my fears either:

“Here's how to get your situation up to the level of the Situation

Listen, dawg. You're probably hitting the gym, doing your tanning, and picking up fresh laundry every day. And maybe you've had some success beating up the beat and creeping on chicks in the club. But do you really think your situation is where it needs to be? Be honest with yourself, bro.

this book here will take your game to a level thought unattainable, given your physical limitations (because we can't all look like Rambo, pretty much, with our shirt off). We start with GTL-the bedrock of life itself. And then we hit the GTL Remix-the rules for getting your personal grooming did. From there it's my guide to the Jersey Shore, battle plans for the club, a primer on grenades and wingmen, and tips for ridding yourself of all levels of clinger. Then I look at the big picture: how to cook the perfect lasagna, how to find a life partner, and how to deal with being one of the most famous people on the planet-which is guaranteed if you follow my advice.

This is the bible for Situation Nation. Read it, live it, and crush it. ”

I feel that if the Ghost Writer is capable of such absolutely ridiculous statements that he might want to try his hand in writing some sort of updated version of “Catch 22” except instead of World War II it would be about the shallowness of modern life. Most of the book reads like some sort of high-minded satire against its very subject. 

Kudos ghost writer, you have made the world a better place. Perhaps in some future point you’ll finally publish that bizarre ultra-ironic story you’ve always dreamed of.