South Park Pulls a Gretzky

Anyone who has listened to Kevin Smith talk for more than a minute knows his philosophy on life is gleaned from The Great One himself: you have to see where the puck is going. For years, Matt Stone and Trey Parker have rooted their comedy in just such prognostication. But when it comes to their show's future,  the defecation-duo leaves fans feeling more like the 1984 Flyers


From the staling of Family Guy to Miley Cyrus's fall from Grace, South Park's creators always have their fingers on America's cultural pulse - if only to execute the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique on it. But in the mid-season finale, "You're Getting Old," the familiar scatological social commentary buckles under the weight of sincere sentiment. As the episode draws to a close, Stan's parents confess mutual disappointment in their marriage. Sharon Marsh faces forward and confesses, as if speaking to the audience on behalf of Matt and Trey:


"It's like the same shit just happens over and over . . . every week it's kind of the same story in a different way, but it just keeps getting more ridiculous."


Randy replies: "I just feel like I might not have a whole lot of time left. And I just want to enjoy it."


For the first time in the episode, we hear a song that is not interrupted by flatulence and the lyrics of Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide;" the moment's candor is enough to move even the most cynical of the show's fans to tears:


Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older and I'm getting older too
Oh, I'm getting older too


Perhaps this is the first period of Matt and Trey's last time on the ice (don't fret too much; they have at least two seasons left), after which they will bid the show that catapulted them to comedic stardom farewell (they are still contracted for several more episodes by Comedy Central). Could this is another sign of post-irony's imminent preeminence in our culture? Or are we being led vulnerably closer before the creators send the puck show daftly in a new direction?

Image URL: http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID15870/images/Cartman_crying,_South_Park.gif

I'm a Terrorist, Apparently

Tread lightly, America. After watching a somewhat over-dramatic prayer from a NASCAR event on someone's wall, I made an allusive joke concerning Infinite Jest. My quip garnered a reply from an opinionated reader (read: troll). When I pointed out some of the more obvious errors in her argument, I somehow became a "terrorist."

 If fundamentalists only knew it was this easy they could avoid all the suicide and collateral damage.

So spread the word!

Zoom in to read.

Florida Harshes Poor's Buzz

Let me start by reiterating how much I respect anyone who is a liberal/Democrat/moderate/sane person in  the state I am about to discuss. Good, now that we got that out of the way - on to the WTF-ness.

Our country’s role-model state, Florida, is the first to pass legislation requiring drug testing for those availing of welfare benefits. In theory, I suppose, this seems like a “fiscally responsible” move – or at least that’s what the fiscally responsible Rick Scott would have you believe, along with much of Republican congresspeople (sic).

Just a couple of questions spring to mind:

1) What about false positives? Won’t they deprive people who genuinely need food, clothes and shelter of these base necessities? I’m willing to bet that one failed drug test lands you on a DNS list – even if you clean up your act and try to contribute to society meaningfully (read: effective penal system). But why reward those battling back from addiction?  It could just be hardline political policy, right? It’s not like Republicans ever asked for second, third or fourth chances after demonstrating an inability to handle money.

2) Won’t drug testing cost as much money as it will save? Well, I guess they could just not count alcohol (most-addicted-to-substance for impoverished US citizens?). Or even better – don’t debar welfare-collectors based on marijuana use. But that might just be too close to actually solving economic problems, theoretically. 

3) Wouldn’t the money used to fund this program be better spent on rehab/recovery programs?

4) Doesn't this strike anyone else as latent socioeconomic discrimination?

I’m just going to leave it at that – Socratic interrogation without the Platonic discursion. Sort of.

"A Relatively Serious and Un-Ironic Reflection" or "Towards Post-Irony"

In the far-too-copious conversations about pop-cultural icons like The Jersey Shore and Rebecca Black that I've had with intelligent friends, there exists a general sentiment of permissiveness amounting to: "I like it ironically." It is easy to empathize with this approach to consuming the patently awful cultural capital circulating nowadays. I will be the first to admit to enjoying Megashark Versus Giant Octopus or The Room. But I am careful never to impart real (as opposed to South Parkian "Internet") money to the creators. "Why not?" you may ask. "Why do you so despicably utilize YouTube and BitTorrent and all these unethical copyright-infringing mediums (allegedly)? Aren't you depriving ingenious individuals of the money they earned by delivering these products?" The answer is: yes. Yes, I am depriving creators of money for their content.

Remorselessly.

The problem is that when money talks it always invokes the same line from Oliver - "Please, sir, I want some more." Nielsen does not possess the technology to discern, when you DVR an episode of John and Kate Plus 8, whether you are doing so because you are a super-cool ironic "hipster" (i.e. vapid) or whether you are doing so because you think this is just about the greatest thing to happen to Television since Technicolor. It's all just money.

This is the great thing about contemporary internet culture - you don't necessarily have to pay up front for the peep show.

By all means - pay to see the thing the first time. But if you are going to complain about how shitty each and every episode of Dancing with the Stars is, why are you contributing your viewership to each and every epidsode? You're much better off catching The Soup (I'd call it "earnest irony") or snippets of embedded videos in satirical blogs (hint hint) if you'd prefer to see those sorts of shows go off the air after having had your laugh.

Rather than continue into the realm of pure diatribe I'll just say this:  if you want to laugh at the equivalent of gilded shit that is circulating on Television, Radio, the Interwebs or any of the other sundry media outlets to which we have access in our singularity-approaching modern times, don't get it directly from the source if you don't approve of the source; that's how Snookie comes to receive more money for speaking engagements than Toni Morrison. Access it through an unironic or satirical secondary source (The Onion, for example). If you happen to find something you do like through one of these outlets, go out of your way to sling green toward the creators. You have more control over who gets your dollar now than ever before, so why waste it?

Sidebar- don't be ironic because it's what all the hipsters are going. That's un-ironic irony, and it subverts the subversiveness of the indie culture that hipsters purport. The truth is is that hipsters are not indie; indie is earnest. If you can't reconcile irony and earnestness you should just stick to the latter. If you can reconcile irony with earnestness you should really be doing stand up.