Friday Night Heat: Invasion

Old School.  Primo at his best.

My Mixed Feelings On Action

Although I'm Hip-Hop 2 Tha Heart, as I prosper in my older age, I do what naturally comes with it & find myself shitting on anybody new coming up, naturally assuming that any music they make is a complete and utter mockery of this thing of ours.  So when I truthfully say that I've been knowing the name Action Bronson because it keeps popping up on every post on 2DopeBoyz.com, but I've never heard any of his music, you can believe me.  This used to be the exact situation I had with Kendrick.

So when I DLed the Funk Flex Tape & forgot what I had read the sequence was in when I was listening to it, I got a nice surprise. Like, this dude is GUTTA.  He got that real raw NY flow that's hard to fake.  Like, I may really need to go back & check homeboy out on his previous shit.  For real.

But....the visuals.  And I ain't just talking the video above either ....

Y'know, Bubba Sparxxx was an aight rapper; Action, off of a couple of listens, is WAAAAAAY nicer than he could ever be; but that whole Cracker thing really put me off & I doubt that I was the only one.  It's just not Hip-Hop.

I understand doing something different than everybody else.  REALLY, I DO.  And more than that, I get trying to "do you".  I get it.

But I think I'ma just stick to the records for the time being.....

Sunday Service: Where Ya At?

If you can groove to this, well then smoke
If you can move to this, well then loc
Cause ain't no party like a Eastside party
Cause a Eastside party ain't no joke

So I Just Watched The Office Finale...

...so once a upon a time, I actually had some *real* feelings for somebody & I'm pretty sure they felt pretty highly of me, too.  Lord knows that the chemistry that we had was, shall we say, unique & not the kind you find with just ole' anybody off the street.

It was the kinda the thing that can keep a person, who gets knocked down at almost at every turn in life, believing that yeah, there could be a point to all this.  Maybe there could a day...a way...maybe there could be a happy ending.

There were tentative plans to go somewhere...else.  Somewhere called Austin.  Because Austin was/is/will always be awesome.  It's the kind of place that gives you that breath of air you need; the place that closes you off to the bad madness & helps you embrace the good madness; it's a place that you could never imagining getting old.

Those dreams didn't happen.  Like most things, the truth got in the way of the fantasy.  It's been a while so all those things aren't as important as they once seemed to be.

Pam wasn't real, but she helped me see what it is that I would want.  What I will never settle for less than.  It has been quite a aid in avoiding things that I knew just wouldn't be worth the trouble when I was at my most human and imperfectness.

Nothing makes me happier than to see Jim & Pam find their ever after.  In Austin.

Even though they weren't real.

Some thoughts about The Great Gatsby

Ideally, I guess, I'm the target audience for The Great Gatsby.  I know it was required reading in school, & that was no exception for me, but for some reason, I know for a fact that I didn't read it.  To be honest, that time is all a ~little~ blurry to me.  I'd like to say "it was all the drugs", but that would be a lie and that is something I would never do on the internet.  The point is, I was going into this movie with only the vaguest of notions of what it was about & what was going to happen in it, which is exactly whoever the asshole who put together those trailers wanted people to have before it came out.

I made a comment about this movie having way more special effects in it than you would expect from some narrative about rich people in the 1920's, but I was only half kidding.  What you need to know is this movie is BEAUTIFUL and that it wasn't an accident.  It's pretty apparent that if there was some kind of message somewhere in this movie about the price of extravagance & excess being too steep of someone's soul to pay, the creators wanted it to be an extreme afterthought 3 days after viewing this.  I mean, I saw Iron Man 3 in 3D last weekend and was more impressed with the way that was done HERE than in that movie.

Since the story is considered a bit of a classic, then I guess I can't really blame the material for the headache I developed while watching this (actually, truth be told, maybe it was all the Heinekens I was throwing back with 3D glasses on #badcombo).  I just suppose as Nick being the eyes in which we see all these events happening, I would find myself having a little more connection;  more relativity to his character, but by the end of the movie, I find myself not giving one damn about the motherfucker.  I have no idea if his role is played much differently in the book & other interpretations, but here, he's not much more than an extreme voyeur (a role that, as I type this, IS given some semblance to in a scene early in the film).

And while this may be the craziest statement in the world coming from me, but the use and inclusion of Hip-Hop music in the narrative seemed just so wrong to me on so many levels that, in describing it here, I'm forced to use a term that I hate when used by other people:  "it took me out of it".  And yet, it did.  By playing Jay-Z instead of jazz music in certain areas, I assume that the film makers were attempting to superimpose this as the black music that transcended race lines at the time because they assume that younger viewers couldn't properly fathom it without a modern day parallel, but that's just some shitty & outright wrong way of thinking, so I guess I won't assume that's why.

Speaking of music:  the film is 142 minutes and I think I should dare somebody to find one minute that doesn't have some kind of music playing in it.   I sincerely hope you enjoy this song because you're treated to an instrumental reprise of it about a million times throughout (and I say this as someone who preaches at The Church Of Lana).  #overkill  Maybe I'm just being too negative about the music due to the movie forcing my ears to once again experience  B's cover of one of Amy's classic, which is the worst torture imposed on mankind since another ill-conceived cover , but I kinda gotta go with my gut (cough, I mean my hearing) on this one.

I do have to say as an insecure male in his mid-30's, I am kinda feeling a little joy in Leonardo Dicaprio getting a few wrinkles around the face mask.  I mean, don't get it twisted, I enjoy homey as an actor and this is as a fine as a performance that someone as talented as himself could give, but when he's standing next to Tobey Maguire (which is most of the movie);who, like Leo, is a grown child actor who was given their career because he had facial features that would make him look like a kid for the rest of his life; it gives him just a little more ammo to play someone convincingly that has seen more than a little mileage in his lifetime.

All in all, not a bad movie, but not a GREAT one (Ha!  Me make Great puns!  Me so funny!).  So watch illegally online at your own risk of disappointment for what you paid for. The only REALLY important thing I took away from the movie is yeah, Elizabeth Debicki #cangetit

God I Miss #Girls

So the unthinkable happened   HBOGO cut me the fuck off.  Of course I was the only one who believed that once I moved outta [REDACTED]'s house, I was no longer going to be able to take his ATT username to have unlimited free streaming of Time Warner's Prized Possession's illustrious library.  I've known for years about their reluctance to allow any of their properties to freely be available to the World Wide Web;  anybody looking at their war with Netflix could peep THAT.  So I was fully aware for their little popular web site solution to this would perhaps have certain safeguards that would verify that the username that you're imputing would match up to the internet provider that you're ACTUALLY using to input in on & that you're a subscriber.

"You're crazy, Chuck.  It's called HBO-GO;  my username will be good no matter whose network it's used on.  Stop being paranoid."

Sigh.  Slap, slap.

The thing was....it DID work for this first whole month.  It was great watching episode of #Girls I had already seen in my kitchen via my K Fire while I was....y'know, I can't remember what I was doing in my kitchen;  I'm at a loss to think about I possibly could have been doing in my kitchen, but I sure as shit remember that it happened.  Trust me, go with it.

But now, *maybe not coincidentally to coincide with the #Girls S2 premiere*, [REDACTED]'s username isn't letting me in to the Matrix;  I keep getting the message that an error occured & I should talk it over with my internet provider.  Eek, that's not the conversation I want to have.  Never have a fight, knowing your in the wrong going in.  Unless you're a woman.  *zing

I guess I could call/text [REDACTED] & ask him to call up ATT & yell at a few people with some made up story about how his daughter comes to this address after school & she used to be able to watch kiddie movies on the computer using his username & as a subscriber, it GodDamn better work over at that address, but....that seems like way too much work.

But then again, the result of this is I am missing #Girls S2 as we speak & seeing everybody on the internet crow about how great it is to see Hanna go at it with Childish Gambino.

So.....I gotta think about this one.

Bad Medicine

First off, Community is a great show.  What started off as a pretty boring concept that had no chance of keeping my attention & was only being viewed by me due to it's very-convenient time slot very quickly evolved in my most anticipated show on Thursday night (& believe me, that's a list with some very steep competition).  It might have been around the GoodFellas spoof (and "Annie's Boobs") that I first realized that something very special was going on here.

Unfortunately, I have been in this type of position before:  Firefly, Veronica Mars, Perfect Couples (shut up, you just don't know), etc.;.....it's almost guaranteed that the next thought I have after opening my eyes to a great piece of entertainment is the one where the realization that "Oh, this isn't going to last".  It's.  All.  So.  Very.  Cliched.

But to be honest, I had been enjoying Community consistently for so long now that I had simply not been paying attention to whether or not this joy of mine was being viewed as a "success" or a "failure" in the eyes of the PTB;  I've got way too much OTHER important shit to worry about with that part of my limited brain space.  So when NBC announced that they were putting the show on hiatus, it would have gone completely off of my radar had I not seen the deluge of outrage over the action on Twitter & other sites (but....let's be honest, mostly Twitter).  It seems that there are way more people who will no longer have a reason for living in a world without Community than NBC's numbers-that-it-uses-to-sell-ads-at-prices-that-keep-the-donuts-churning was showing them on paper.  Go figure.

And this is where I usually get lost & start feeling like I'm alone in this world with only the corporations* to sleep with at night because we share the same POV.  No matter how much I may love something in corporate entertainment, I never lose sight of the fact that this IS a business and it is the shows that go around the commercials, not the commercials that go around the shows.  Creators, actors, directors can all do public speaking and tell us fans what we all want to hear all day, but shit, nobody is working for free.  Nor should they.  And seeing how I *ahem* work inside one of these big huge corporate models 5 days a week, I have faith that The Beast will not shut down my Gmail account (=My Life) if I share something that is Gospel in the inner workings:  Growth is King.  If something is steady, then it is failing.  No, stop, none of this makes sense, but you NEED to believe & understand this.  If something is NOT growing in a expected capacity, or in ANY kind of capacity, then it's time is limited as fuck.

And this is why everything that's cool in this world is usually a "failure".  Most nerds** of culture are usually pretty insulated people, in that they're not very much with the whole "sharing" thing;  at least in the way that a normal person will be able to attract other people outside of their clicks to something.  When you create a product that you're heavily invested in, for the most part, you can't control who your fan base is going to be. But whoever they are, you're going to need them to talk good about your product to people who aren't already buying your product.  If you see your fans only Tweeting about your performance to others who are already in that particular circle, then you know it's pretty much it's a wrap for you.

People in society value loyalty like no other quality.  Smart people with skin in the game know this is all a bunch of bullshit;  loyalty doesn't keep you afloat, addiction that can easily spread from contact does.

......So why don't we ALL get some skin in the game & even the odds?

*******************************************************************************
The way we view TV is changing rapidly.  We have widely different options than simply being at a said space at a said time.  We can view it any different time, any different pace, any different setting that we choose nowadays, and yet, the way "our" actions are being viewed is still through the old, outdated, inaccurate measure that has been used for all this time.  And yet, I can't disagree with this.  Ads are THE thing that powers The Machine & if I were an advertiser, they would be no way I would accept any results from a DVR as an appropriate indication of the audience I will have at my disposal to sell my wares.  The truth is that the price for the advancement of our convenience is the death of any long term quality.  In order for this trend to balance out, we may need to bring some inconvenience back into the equation.....

Nielsen ratings are fucked and that's never going to change, including bitching about it.  So what can we do? Well....we can BUY it.

A majority of TV shows are now being sold on iTunes & Amazon (that Hulu & Netflix shit ain't helping nobody) and while it's public knowledge that any profits from these purchases are being split with their respective distributors, a buck for something without any sponsors is still a buck.  Nobody for one second thinks that the average online sales on any given TV show is fucking with the numbers of it's public showing, but THAT.  HAS.  TO.  CHANGE.  If advertisers are not going to invest in a TV show, then it's time for it's fucking fans to.

Take a paycheck & buy the DVD sets.  Order all the episodes online.  After you view it on your DVR, buy that episode as soon as it's available, whether you plan on rewatching it or not.  OWN the show.  If this is done with the same passion & commitment that it takes to Tweet or write a half-ass blog, then do THIS instead.  At a certain point, you can't tell me that taking THIS action is not going to get noticed by the people who control whether or not we get more episodes.

#OccupyGreendale all you want, it'll probably just get you pepper-sprayed. #sixseasonsandamovie doesn't happen on love alone.

If Community goes off the air for good, then I will be sad; but make no mistake:  my life will go on & be just fine.  If you can't say that with such ease, then you need to do something about it.  And now.

This is your burden, not mine.  And don't let anyone fool you, you are alone in this.  The only actions that you will know for a fact to make a difference with be yours, not anyone else.

Fuck me, don't let yourself down.  Peace.

#saveCommunity






*Which have been ruled by The Supreme Court to be people & I should legally be allowed to marry them;  unlike another man or something, I guess.

**Basically anyone who is a smarty-pants about any given subject.  Ex. Music nerd, TV nerd, Font nerd, etc.