No, There Is Not A Conspiracy to Kill Off Random Celebrities

Over the past two weeks, a smidgen of people involved with entertainment in different ways have all passed on. Obviously, the biggest one of these is Michael Jackson, but they've ranged to the passing of names like 70s sex symbol Farrah Fawcett to TV pitchman Billy Mays to the passing today of Karl Malden, who starred in A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront. Morbidly, people are asking "who's next?" as if there's some sort of conspiracy to kill people in the middle of June. But let's look at the fact that most of these names, bar the freak accident that killed Mr. Mays and the possible overdose that took Jackson's life, all died of something that naturally happens all the time to people. Cancer, as sad as it is, happens to millions every year and takes away many of those who try to fight it and it took Farrah's life as if she were just your average 62 year old woman.

People seem to forget when tragedy strikes that death is not discerning. It is often random, but it's not discerning. This also isn't Final Destination here. Billy Mays didn't die because death was having a bad morning. He died because of a freak accident that occurred and cannot rationally be explained as to why it happened or why the tire busted from that airplane and baggage hit him on the head and likely led to his death.

On the same note with Farrah's passing, some people make it out of cancer treatment and others don't. But it is forgotten that death is one of the more random developments in our world simply because any moment can be interrupted by a gunshot or a car wrecking into the side of a house or something that often cannot rationally be explained.

Or it can simply be attributed to age. It is also forgotten that Malden was 97 when he died. The guy was out of acting for years and was obviously winding down his life. Gale Storm, who got a passing mention as a notable dead celebrity, was 87 years old. Ed McMahon was 86 years old and had not been seen in public in quite a while. All of these losses are tragic, but the fact that all of them died (all of natural causes) at the same week or so period is entirely coincidental.

More importantly, there isn't a conspiracy to kill more of these celebrities off. Sydney Pollack died last year in late May last year. Was it a part of some conspiracy to off the guy that directed Three Days in the Condor? No. He simply died of a disease that has a known history of killing people.

And sadly, things like that occur. But like a lot of things in life, many deaths "in a row" can't be explained as anything more than a sad series of random coincidence.

(Yes, I know I've been covering death a bit too much lately. The next blog will probably be happier when, you know, I get to it. Thanks for supporting FID in any means, especially if you bought this on Kindle. Your support is just awesome.)

Societal Intake of Death

This week, death was an overbearing force in pop culture. Which is odd, because death is around us constantly, but no one thinks about its true effect on society until a famous person dies. It's an all too alarming situation that's the only way we can cope with tragedy, though. If we give significance to every person that dies, how do we move on with our lives? It's cold and callous to view one death as more or less important than the other. But it's a reality in the world we live in. We live not to mourn, but to accomplish, I suppose. This is probably an obvious sentiment to everyone reading this.

The Bronx Saves Punk Rock

(More retroblogging here. This was from sometime in February destined to be posted on Distracted by Movement, but I just didn't post it. But now you kids get to read it here!)

Sometimes, punk is a hilarious and great genre of music. People claw and get mad whenever a band "sells out" or sounds like crap...which is pretty much determined by the fact that they sold out. In short, it's created a mess of a genre. Any band that sounds like old school punk is readily ignored, because old school punk is terribly crafted music. And pop-punk is plain annoying. But somehow, "hard punk" with pop sensibilities (i.e. catchy choruses and such mixed in with vocals that don't sound like a man's pants are on too tight) is exactly the perfect recipe to save the genre. The Clash, The Ramones, and etc. were poppy bands that managed to sort of rock while they also talked about rocking the casbah, blitzkrieg bopping, and being sedated.

But maybe one band called The Bronx figured out that silly simple rock is exactly what the genre needs. Now when someone says a band is simple, it's usually pejorative. They're trying to slam the band for making songs that are skin deep, that mean nothing deep in any sort of sense. And admittedly, nothing The Bronx talks about in a band is anything I can really legitimately relate to or are about anything particularly deep, not even the desire to kill one's friends is a sentiment that's really deep in any way, shape, or form.

But that's exactly what punk rock at its core should be. When Johnny Rotten acted like a blooming idiot in 1977, all while his bandmates praised the awesomeness of anarchy and even with the awareness that they really hated the Queen, they still were pretty intellectually voided. Even when Johnny Rotten made up for it with the inventive Public Image Ltd. later on, none of the Sex Pistols' sentiments were deep. No, they were simplistic, they had no subtext to them. They liked anarchy and hated the Queen of England. They wanted to be crazy and stupid and overthrow authority.

While I can't say The Bronx is all about anarchy, they relish in being "not deep." They are about laughing about silly things and laughing at the silly people in their silly town of Los Angeles because they can. Now you may say, "Isn't that like every other punk band?" Well, yeah. I guess so, in a way. Except Against Me's now being concerned about war, Green Day's being purely retarded about war, and most of The Bronx's contemporaries aren't nearly as charming at being stupid. They know how to play instruments, and they know how to hate a record label, and they sip cigars and smoke wine.

The band has released three full length albums, with only the second being a dalliance with a major label. (And while I don't believe that major labels always make a band suck, The Bronx (II) isn't as good as the other two. So maybe there's truth to this, in a way.) The first and the third record are almost complete soundalikes, which is also usually a pejorative comparison. But once again, this is exactly how it should sound. They should be a perfectly fine hour-long punk song that has very brief stopgaps. Almost all of the songs should be three minute blasts that bring on the same sort of subject matter, whether it be insecurity and anger on Bronx (I) or insecurity and anger on Bronx (III). The only difference between the first and the third record has to be that the third record is a huge rant on the music industry. "Digital Leash" from Bronx (III) doubles as a massive apology to those who hated the second record and as a great rockin' album closer that inexplicably has two minutes of silence on its end.

Me and My Rant-Filled Anger: Part I

(Originally Curated: April 22nd, 2009)

Welcome to my rant mode, it's nice to see you all again. I don't know what it is about this week that's suddenly had me driven up the wall, but eh, it happens. I don't hate life or anything of the sort, but shit pisses me off rather quickly, so there ya go. It'll be on general topical annoyances that will immediately date me, and with that in mind, I feel I should start writing and a making general point.

Annoyance:

- The media coverage of Susan Boyle.

There's great uplifting stories in the world that are supposed to remind us that superficiality shouldn't triumph over hard work. That "pretty" people don't rule the world and so on and so forth. That's why people are connecting with Ms. Susan Boyle, a YouTube sensation because she's a damn good singer and that's all she needs to be. So immediately the entertainment media talks about her looks and her jacket and her "not being kissed" (which was a kind of a self-humbling joke she made herself on the Britain's Got Talent show) again as if any of those things are issues that actually matter. I wouldn't buy a Susan Boyle CD or anything, but the woman can sing. But of course, talent is insignificant when looks are supposed to be front and center. Good one, guys.

(Two months later, of course, I am reminded that Boyle's slowly gone insane from the media heat and eh, I don't blame her. I would do much the same. Melt in the heat of "what's Susan doing" and whatnot. And yes, I'm only adding this as an excuse to post this.)

Why pro wrestling and the smark community have no mainstream acceptance.

I thought long and hard about the contents of this particular piece, and getting into geeky and low-rent territory such as this, but I feel that the subject is particularly valid. First, let me get into boring exposition. I have been a wrestling fan since I was around seven years old. I probably should've never watched the hyperviolent WWF product of the late 1990s and thankfully, I forgot most of the more misogynistic and exploitative parts to remember great matches and moments that I never forgot. Of course, I never knew about a smark community, either. Smarks are "smart wrestling fans." They obviously know about the fakeness of the business and seek to find out why a match works, who is loved in the locker room, etc. They also overanalyze the basicness of the business.

Pro wrestling is art, in that art can and should apply to anything expressive. Of course, pro wrestling is also sleazy, pretty racist, and kind of wrong, sort of like Hollywood with lesser money being handed to the athletes. And both properties are art for the same exact reason that they attempt to accomplish the dynamics of a human story, even with midgets, scantily clad divas, and a couple of giants.

I might be calling the kettle black here because I bitch about what I don't like in pro wrestling, as I do with everything else in entertainment at times. But I've grown tired of the idea of worrying about burials (when fans feel that a star is being put down a card) and about what Vince McMahon thinks of a guy. Because what does it fucking matter to anybody? It doesn't. Yes, the pro wrestling business is the only one where on a weekly basis, putting over (losing) and being put over (winning) can change on a dime, but the true amount of bitching and whining over such arbitrary things is pointless.

You do not see film fans complaining that at the end of The Usual Suspects, they were swerved and that Keyzer Soze is Kevin Spacey. No, because it's in the story's plans. Mind you, film is a more concise art, but even then, did anyone complain that the ending of The Wrestler was basically left uncertain? These are arbitrary things and people look like true geeks when they make an argument that "Man B shouldn't be getting buried because he has a better workrate than Man C." There's also a reason why Chris Klein gets as much work as Paul Giamatti in Hollywood and that's because sometimes the look is just right. It is why Keanu Reeves and Will Smith are A-listers while J.K. Simmons is awesome as a character actor. It is because sometimes, the look is a better fit than the work itself. Should it be that way? No. But it is that way. And it is that way not because Vince dictated it or Hollywood dictated it. It is because your girlfriend might be drawn more to seeing Channing Tatum shirtless (as you would be if say Jessica Alba was shirtless). That's basic science and how things are.

My current favorite show on television is a show on Starz called Party Down. In it, there is a nerdy character named Roman who is vastly unlikable, brags about his prestigious blog (HEY!), and also makes semantical arguments about science fiction movies (such as arguing why Edgar Allen Poe isn't a drunk in a movie when the premise of the movie is Poe fighting vampires). You change sci-fi movie to Vladimir Kozlov's workrate and you literally have the same character as the majority of the smark nation. Should we like every little thing that comes out way? Well, no. But to argue the impact of burials or the evils of Vince's revisionist history (because again, revisionist history is such a new concept) or whatever is wasting life. It's semantical. Like drunk Poe fighting vampires.

I live-Twitter MATH TEST 4 '09.

To bring up the absurdity of my Twitter account, I present to you my tales in the Math Lab for my fourth test of the year. THIS IS USELESS INFO~!

Test day = evil, finding new albums by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez = eh, maybe it's good.about 7 hours ago from TweetDeckTime to awkwardly stare at people in the math lab. WOO!about 5 hours ago from TweetDeckI prepare my punching hand as I hear the words "I got an 84. Bullshit."about 5 hours ago from TweetDeckHmmm, 42 minutes before test time here and no interesting test-takers have appeared. Oh, and some bull about a concert is happening. Fun.about 5 hours ago from TweetDeckMore noise! Not surprising. Still no one interesting, though.about 5 hours ago from TweetDeckMy follower count has fallen by 1 since the LIVE-TWITTERING MATH TEST 4 '09 started. I view this as a giant success.about 5 hours ago from TweetDeckOh no, the dreaded Southern accents are coming into my ear. Whatever will I do!?about 5 hours ago from TweetDeckMATH TEST '09 WRAPUP: I made a high C on a test, a significant improvement from a low F.about 1 hour ago from web
In short, I just WASTED YOUR LIFE. YAY!

This writing is probably mildly embarrassing.

It felt like a goddamn bombing.

I stood out to the beautiful yet murky Black Warrior River and had a little bit of a sigh. I was staring out into the water, noticing that once again the whizz and hum of planes exploded in front of me as the noise behind me continued to be a similar explosion of noise.

Something about this seemed sensible, joyous even. In a world where the seas were once clear, there's a bit too much noise for everyone's liking and a bit too much dirt and piss in the water.

I stared at all of this nature and wildness around me and felt mixed feelings. I felt happy and satisfied because of the events that took place, because of the sun's constant ability to beam at just the right moments. I just don't know if I can handle the bad things, though. The world is obviously fucked up, so it's not like this is new information nor does my feelings on the world really change it. But it's still savagely affecting.

At one moment, I was reminded of the simple beauty of the world. Of the gaze of a totally beautiful woman, or the view of leafy green trees composed against the backdrop of totally barren trees. Everything was totally contradictory. Jet fighter planes only reminded me that our world is shitty, wars happen, and that people predictably suck.

But this same day, at one moment, I lay there on a blanket. I have no idea whose blanket it was or why they might have left or even the reason why they would have left. All I knew was that I was in a living photograph. And I was lying next to the most beautiful woman in the world. There was an old man rambling, but this didn't matter. I suspected that I would not have many moments like this in my lifetime, so I probably should appreciate that moment because I don't know how many great friendship or lover opportunities I'd ever have with this person. But I think that there won't be too many of those simple chances. That isn't a pessimistic outlook—well, mostly not—it's just how things work in this world. No one trusts anybody else and no one lets themselves go nearly often enough in front of a giant bunch of people. Pure inhibitions take a backseat to keeping a self-important facade.

I don't know. And maybe that's all I should keep in mind.