What is "IN" and what is "FINITE"

It only takes one month. 30 days, my friends, can turn a pauper to a priest and a rich man to ashes. This is not the case across the map. It is not a common demographic from town to town and state to state that demonstrates every infinitesimal difference accrued by living as a lost soul in a town like Hollywood. For such a standard can only be set in aforementioned area. There are no quips here; no clever puns that can break you from the bonds that you, yourself, set. Once you enter this realm, there are only two options: infinite success and epic failure. Ergo, those that do succeed are the ones that can discern the "IN" from the "FINITE." You see, the "IN," the popular culture that is ever-changing and adapting to the wants and needs of the public, is a quality that will never die. It is a sense that can never be abolished. It is the alpha and the omega of your high school drama. The "FINITE," however, is the rebellion. It is the creation and the art. It is the muse. It is the outstanding voice that tells the "IN" to fuck off if they choose to consistently abide by a crooked status quo. The "FINITE" is the lucifer of modern classicism. But the conflict between these ideologies begs the question: what is the higher road to success.

About a week ago, my cousin and I were among the lucky masses that witnessed the brilliance that is Thom Yorke. Chances are if this name does not strike you as familiar, you fall under the category of the "IN crowd." Unlike most popular musicians, Yorke does not abide by a standard of what music should be. He does not augment his sound to serve the purpose of the media. He does not compromise in his live appearances or in life as it stands. Thom Yorke is enlightened. Because of this singularity, this factual outcome of nature, he will never be acceptable as a viable radio network-worthy entity amongst the Clear Channel bourgeoisie. Yet the people still come in troves and masses. Even the "IN crowd" members that have bared witness to his art would admit to his superiority over the radio elites. That makes him a media pirate and his discography a manifestation of pirate radio. But populous has placed a glass ceiling on what he does. That makes him the "FINITE."

About three years ago I watched Kanye West take the stage at Grant Park. He is the "IN." However, Kanye's music is reliant almost exclusively on the talent of others. If there were no good samples to be had, this self-proclaimed "musical genius" would cease to be. There is no ingenuity. Just a facade placed so casually that originality is easily and wrongly implied. He is an archetype for this subsection. As tens of thousands observed, I walked away. My scene is not defined by what it is popular. In fact, it is exemplified by what is not. I am not into what is "IN." I am a loser.

I am a loser. I want to stress that fact. I am a loser. I am the "FINITE." I will be limited. I will be oppressed. I will be critiqued. But I will not falter in my stance. Just as there is no "I" in "team," one can say there is no "good" in "pop culture." I've never listened to Kid Cudi, but I know every lyric written by Mother Mother and can guarantee that the latter has deeper significance. The meaning behind a song shouldn't be about a hairdo or a clothing brand. It is about a genuine experience that would be inconceivable by any other human being, but is still significant to every human being. And that is why I will never be a "Kid Cudi." I am "FINITE." I am a "Thom Yorke." But I am a fighter. So bring on the "IN."

No Birds Flock Southward Anymore

“I’m as free as a bird now, and this bird you cannot change.”

~some really old, really drunk guy at a biker bar

Well, Rose, did you know you had a part of compass named after you? That’s right, boys and girls. This edition of K&C is geographically themed. If that doesn’t turn you on, you should probably tune out right about now. For those that would like to continue reading, we are going to begin with a brief longitudinal / latitudinal lesson. A compass has four guiding directions: north, south, east and west. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Similarly, stem cells are harvested in the north and retards are terminated in the south. I hope you understand my logic or at least have as sick of a sense of humor as my twisted, half drunk mind at 3:21 AM. In any case, many of you may or may not be familiar with avian migration patterns. In summation, when the weather gets cold, birds go wherever it is warm. Get it? Good, because the concept of migration is going to be a central theme for this blog.

First, let’s clarify. About 2 years ago, I fell into a very intense depression from which I could not recover no matter what I did. I never really discussed that with anybody except my closest friends because… well frankly, it was nobody else’s business. Because of that, everything in my life suffered including relationships with friends and family, schooling and general outlook on life. With the help of psychologists and personal reflection, I discovered that the reason I had been so depressed was the state of my seldom-changing surroundings. However, I was afraid to leave because there was someone that had been my sole reason for living whom I did not want to lose in my life. However, as my situation worsened and her patience with my depression had worn thin, I had found that I was simply grasping at straws in order to find a reason to stick around. After our breakup, the opportunity had arisen for me to relocate to a more suitable scene. This, by the way, is where the concept of migration comes into play.

Birds are some of the most nomadic, independent creatures one can observe in their natural habitats. However, even birds fly in flocks. Unfortunately, birds of a feather flock in completely opposite fucking directions. One of my best friends, Gian Vacca, was suffering from a similar depression fueled by similar problems in life. Also, ironically, it was around the same time as my own depression. Both of us had plans for relocation, which we had been discussing for months prior to departure. He was to be heading far east to Turkey not to long after I departed on my excursion far west towards Los Angeles. Prior to his departure, I indulged in a rousing, nostalgic romp down memory lane. In doing so, I quickly realized that almost everyone that had moved away for one reason or another had dispersed in any direction but southward. I found this to be particularly ironic considering most migration patterns among animals in their natural element have a characteristic southward relocation.

So, what does that mean for our non-aviary selves. Maybe it means that we naturally have a poor sense of migrating direction. Maybe it means that we have a direct aversion to such migration patterns. Maybe it means absolutely nothing. But maybe, just maybe, the entire concept will serve as a metaphor-based anthem for an entire generation of “free birds.” Maybe, we will never really know the truth. Maybe I had a specific point and purpose for this entire entry. Maybe by this point, I just don’t care what the intended point was. Maybe I just forgot what the point was. In any case, I do know this: eventually, every chicken flies the coop. Even my casual drinking does not make me naïve enough to believe otherwise. But, nobody migrates southward anymore. That is, unless they are retired war vets that are looking for a nice place to die. Though it is true that southward travel used to be much more common, but not so much nowadays. I blame the economy. Instead, some travel north, and most travel either east or west like Mr. Cow and myself respectively. And you know what? I completely understand why. But nobody could really understand the reasoning until they try it.

A Weekend with the Son of God

I am not now, nor have been in recent past, a religious individual. I say "in recent past" because, as a kid, I was raised to believe in the Roman Catholic faith. I went to church every Sunday. I was baptized, confirmed, and all the steps in between. I will probably marry in the Roman Catholic Church just to complete the cycle. But in any case, I could not honestly say that I was ever a hardcore, Bible-fucking Catholic more so than simply being young and naive. Thus, the concept of "Christmas" has always been a bit taboo for me seeing as once a year I am forced to submerge into this vapor of yuletide noxiousness. Of course, this gathering of the souls has little actual relevance to religion as it would stand. I assume that the entire concept of the holiday could, at the most general level, be dissected into the same two key sub points that you could expect from a nation so adoring of righteousness and consumerism: the heart and soul of the season (the religious and commercial aspects respectively). However, the new naiveté would insist that there is more to the season than such simple notions would suggest. So, as any self-respecting misery-inducing Christmas-loathing subhuman would do, I took the time to try to justify everything that I believed to be untrue.

As far as the majority of community goes, most people make a concerted effort to be politically correct. This is especially true around the holidays. So, the general population is not shoving its religious ideals down your throat unless they (a) know you personally (b) know you intimately or (c) are the worst kind of person (religious fanatics). In fact, a much more sinister power is usually at work and it’s name is ethnocentrism. Yes, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year for racism. But unlike the KKK, ethnocentrism does not manifest itself in the form of blatant, outspoken hatred. It appears as smugness and egotism. That, in turn, explains why there need not be words about religion on a religious holiday. Those that are blessed enough to afford to participate in Christmas festivities feel that their holy deity loves them more than the poor and generally less fortunate. In fact, the more monetary pull you have, the more spirited you seem to be. Which leads us to our next topic: Christmas as a commercial entity. I can summarize this with one metaphor. Commercial industries are pimps with the same whore: Santa Claus. They use the jolly old man to solicit useless items to children and adults alike. What’s more is the fact that he was created as a wrongful personification of the Christmas spirit. So, in a sense, if you believe in said Christmas spirit, you are a proponent of whoring your children’s idols out to the highest bidder. My parents were never the highest bidders during Christmas and, being raised in the 90’s, that was always an issue. The 90’s were the original douche bag era and everybody else aspired to be Slater from “Saved By the Bell,” but I just wanted to be like Kurt Cobain. Every Christmas, I would ask for a shitty guitar so I could learn and eventually break during a gig. Or at least that was my plan. But my parents were never the highest bidders. Maybe that’s why Kurt Cobain never came down my chimney and gave my father a blowjob in our living room. My parents were not corporate America. Kurt Cobain was not a whore. I never wanted to be Santa Claus.

So, I guess, ultimately, I was wrong about how I perceived the magic of the Christmas season. There really is more to it all than just religion and consumerism. Christmas is also about the KKK, egotism, the 90’s, “Saved By the Bell,” Kurt Cobain and, above all, prostitution. And that is why your kids pay top dollar to sit on Santa’s lap at your local shopping mall.

The Marksman and the Media

I hate the media. I think there might be a good chance that during all of those nights that I spent watching news coverage, sitting alone in my room and drinking from the tap of a miniature keg of Heineken, I might have had a high-pitched, inaudible voice in the back of my head telling me that every news story has one side that everyone will know about within a week and one side that no one will ever know about. Some call this biased reporting. I think that I can agree with that, but only to a certain degree and only under certain circumstances. You see, the idea of biased reporting implies that the reporter is completely informed about the story within the report. I’m no media expert by any standard of measurement, but if I was told by a meteorologist that my morning commute was looking sunny and I arrive at my destination with cracks in my windshield from a sudden hailstorm, then one might say that I’ve bared witness to faulty reporting. This, in time, makes a person cynical. Ergo, I prefer to watch every news broadcast with a glass of fine wine and the same sense of insecurity that has, for the most part, been validated before the end of the week in which the news cast airs.

Let’s take the Michael Jackson 2005 child molestation case for example. When the trial began on January 31 of that year, almost every report on any network was predominantly weighted to demonize Jackson and prove his guilt. As it turned out (and as anyone that hasn’t been in a coma for the last five or six years can tell you) the “King of Pop” was acquitted on all charges. So what does this say about the media as a whole? It says that despite the plain of propaganda on which these reporters choose to report, they usually end up looking like what one could call “media vultures” due to the lack of information disclosed to the public. In the Jackson case, Jackson triumphed over media notoriety despite a constant barrage of slanderous attacks. Then what can we learn from this predicament? If you are an idiot and you are truly proud of the fact, then feel free to believe everything that you hear on the television.

The bloodhounds at Fox News label themselves as “fair and balanced” coverage. I might begrudgingly give them the “balanced” part, but definitely not the “fair.” For those that have taken the time to really appreciate cable programming, chances are you began flipping through the channels beginning at channel 2 and then proceeded to mindlessly and almost deliberately take in as many different programs from as many different networks as you possibly could in abbreviated half-second increments; that is, until you reached the Fox News channel, watched 22 minutes of whatever happened to be on, and finally turned your television off and retired to your bed where you wept in dismay and contemplated suicide. Fox News is the poster-child for everything that could be considered unfair. Aside from their eternal opposition to liberal agenda, reporters on this particular network capitalize on the misery and lament of the people. Everything is a downer. Nothing has ever or will ever be right. Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I guess I’ll go eat worms. Fox News is televised anguish. The most interesting part about it isn’t even that the reporters are always dull and seemingly unhappy, because generally they’re not. Usually, they are either abnormally angry (as in Lorena Bobbit angry, which might actually be borderline psychotic) or too upbeat to deliver the saddening stories that plague the world. In the end, everyone is miserable except for the newscasters and me. I watch Comedy Central.

I had a dream the other night. Well, it wasn’t exactly a dream and it wasn’t exactly night. It was more like a conscious thought closely followed by a plan that I already new I would never have enough motive or drive to carry out. But since I don’t want to find myself in prison because of this particular piece of writing (and seeing as I have probably written things that are much more likely to lead to my imprisonment), we’ll say that I had a dream the other night. In this dream, I was walking around with a sniper rifle picking off anchormen one by one until there was none left. Then I came home and looked into the mirror to see that I had turned into Mr. Rogers. This raises two important questions to me, the first being “Why the hell did I turn into Mr. Rogers?” That one will probably perplex me for the rest of my natural life. The second and more important of the questions is “If someone did, in fact, kill off all of the world’s reporters, who would know?” Obviously, if there were no news anchors to deliver the news, then there would be no news. And without any news, who would know about my senseless and pointless mass media massacre? For that matter, who would care? What would the world be like if we all lived in complete ignorance? That would be a scene to behold. Maybe everything would be better. Maybe ice cream would taste sweeter and McDonald’s food would be less fattening. Maybe doctors would find a cure for cancer (but probably not AIDS). Maybe Donald Trump’s hair would grow back. But if any of that stuff did happen, how would anybody be able to figure that out?

The truth is, the world probably is better without news and newscasters and, for that matter, any form of mass media. But we, as Americans, need all of that crap to get us through the monotony of everyday, 9 to 5, minimum wage life. Women need Lifetime. Men with hormonal imbalances need Spike. Miserable, potentially homicidal writers need Comedy Central. America needs “fair and balanced” news coverage. But nobody needs Fox News.