Joan Jett w/Foo Fighters - "Bad Reputation" Live at MSG NYC 11/13

This is Joan Jett (yes, the one and only) playing with the Foos at MSG. I can't describe this, just watch and you'll see!

More Intelligence

So I've been away for a while, hopefully the two earlier articles are enough to keep you entertained.  I've been thinking for a while about this article that I'm going to publish it's about turning 30, which I did last week.  Which is why I haven't posted in a week or so.  See my birthday was Wednesday, and my friend Anson's was on Sunday, and this has basically been birthday week.

  My birthday was awesome,
 and Anson's was even better.  Sunday night we went to Foo Fighters

at Madison Square Garden.  The experience was incredible.We were right up front, I mean if I could jump higher I could have touched Dave Grohl.

Why didn't I try?  Anyway there's a clip, which I'll publish, of the Foos with Joan Jett.  It's insane!
So here's the thing: people always give me shit about the crush I've had on Dave Grohl since I was like 17.  I don't know what it is but he's just awesome.  When I saw them the other night I finally got it.  He's great at what he does.  And I don't mean that as a euphemism, I don't mean like wow great, meh.  I mean as in like he's one of the greats, yeah him.  I also feel like he'd go and get drunk and just b real cool about everything.  That's what's attractive.  He's gotta know how good he is, and yet he'll down some Jack and a Natty Light in a minute, awesome.  So even at 17 or whatever I had wonderful taste. This is just another case of me being right.

                                                                             See?!?
-Genius  

Wise-Ass

When I was a kid a child psychologist told my mother that I had ADD.  And basically, they were going to medicate me and I’d be on ritalin for most of my formative years.  They then went on to explain that my hyper-activity, and personality would diminish, and I’d become far less rambunctious, and thus would be easier to deal with.  Thank God my mother’s a bitch, because she basically told them, “No, he won’t be medicated, you’ll just have to deal with him”, I was never put on ritalin or anything else.  Most people I know, especially guys, were informed early-on that they had ADD, and I guess depending on whether or not their moms were bitches, they were either medicated or not.  It’s a slippery slope. (I know adults who will pop an adderal to beat a hang over, that’s true.)  Thankfully my mother mother taught me early on, “drugs are bad” and my creativity flourishes! 

Strangely, it’s not just me, people have always said that my generation was prone to ADD.  Are you serious?! Of course we were, follow this set-up: we first had TV, then cable, then MTV, then VHS, then upgraded from a Walk-Man to a Disc-Man, then Laser Disc, then DVD, finally around high school the world got cell phones, then we got our iPods, then iPhones, then MacBooks, all of this mind you, while still taking the SATs, applying to college, playing high school sports, learning how to drive, dating, drinking, learning how to pack a bowl, and of course discovering the wonders that are the pubescent human body.  Of course we all have ADD!

But, so what?  Maybe ADD is the way it should be.  Who cares if you can focus on one thing and accomplish it, when you can do five things at the same time?  As long as shit’s getting done, right?  For instance I’m writing this blog while I’m at work, and later when I edit this I’ll be at home: probably checking email, watching HULU, and, if I know myself, there will be a window of porn somewhere.  Maybe the phone will ring and I will incorporate it into what I’m doing.  I somehow have become “the Blob” of multitasking--nothing stops me in my tracks, I just incorporate it and move along.  So I’ll have a conversation with my best friend, while writing, and checking scores for the Yankees and the Giants, and ordering a sick new shirt from snorgtees; it would take me too long to do each of these things at their own time, and to be honest I don’t have the attention span.

I’m not the only one either.  Like I said, this is a generational thing.  Look at Occupy Wall Street, they are basically a protest for those with ADD.  When asked what they were protesting by a New York Times reporter, the answer came back, they were protesting the following (and I will summarize, as the answer was about three paragraphs, and well, it rambled): the lack of accountability of corporations, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the general state of the environment, and the U.S. Economy, and something about how the U.S. is viewed in foreign countries.  First of all, I agree with them on most of these issues, except the views of foreigners, because, I mean, they’re foreign, why would anyone care about their views?  Seriously though, they are protesting the right stuff, but all at once?  I mean, pick a topic people.  No one can take it seriously when all the protesters are shouting different things.  I had a friend who was in Washington Sq. Park this weekend and almost got arrested, now he wasn’t part of the protest, but he was in the park.  He told me that he heard at least five different chants going on at once.  And these people are serious and willing to get arrested for their beliefs, and yet refuse to coordinate a singular statement.  

It’s not just the message that lacks focus either, I’ve seen signs at NYU encouraging students to go study on Wall St.  Literally, go protest, but while you’re there make the most of your time.  It’s like someone’s mother came up with the concept, “Well you can go down to the protest, but you’d better bring this book along, and do five math problems before you pick up even one sign, and make sure to call me and text me every fifteen minutes so I know you’re safe.”  Done!  24000+ videos on YouTube, mom.  You can just click refresh and see how safe I am.  No joke, people are doing all sorts of things during this protest, streaming and blogging, and posting to YouTube, and FaceBook.  Why would they focus on one thing when they can get tons of shit done at once?

The best part is how stymied the institution is.  I mean Bloomberg’s furious, so are several of the large banks and brokerage houses on Wall St., and the best part is their reaction is very much the same as that psychologist who told my mom that I needed Ritalin: They don’t know what to do, they don’t have an answer for people who just say, “No, I refuse.”  It’s brilliant!  I won’t do what you told me I have to do, and now you have to deal with that.  

If Bloomberg actually wants the protests to stop he should just have the demonstrations crop dusted with Adderall: suddenly you’d have protesters with incredible clarity and need for efficiency, and they’d probably just return to work, but of course that won’t happen so until then, our ADD asses will continue to demonstrate, and write, and blog, and post and change things so that the world better fits us, instead of making ourselves easier to deal with...

  

The Genius Speaks

I work at a restaurant for the time being and last night I was working a private party for some alumni from NYU Stern (their business school).  It was a riot, and by that I mean boring as fuck.  I did overhear one investment banker comment to the other that socializing has completely changed, thanks to social networks like Facebook.  He then went on the surmise that in a hundred years (in which time we’ll all be dead) people won’t even talk to one another but instead will be connected to one another in some kind of mental internet that he had designed in his fantasies.  Listen to me, I’m all for suspension of disbelief, but there were just too many questions for me: what are the limits to this mental internet? can everyone know everything that I think? do I have to know what they are thinking?  Facebook already takes up too much of my time, when this new mental internet comes out, how will I keep a job?  more importantly, when will I masturbate?  My party was mid first course, and I was about to ask this asshole exactly what the parameters of his vision were, when something occurred to me:  When I was ten years old I told my neighbor that I wanted to drive a racecar when I got my license.  Her response was that by the time I got my license, people would be driving flying cars.  I turned 16 in 1997, and to this day --I have kept up with automotive trends-- they haven’t made a flying car, they can’t even make one that doesn’t need tires, shit I haven’t even seen a decent hover-craft.  So if they can’t make cars cooler, they’ll never get around to this mental internet, right?  Technology goes where people will buy it.  That’s why I can find six hundred pictures in a series of a man getting pissed-on in a public bathroom in Munich while five mechanics and two butchers look on.  Meanwhile, try to find how much it costs to get your license in NYC (I’ll wait, go try)... of course you didn’t, why would you?  It’s $16, I just saved you an entire day of searching, you’re welcome.  The point is people will pay for porn so it’s way more readily accessable, than other boring shit.  The other point is we can’t guess where technology is going, because we don’t know what will be important to people en masse.  Who’d have thought that sharing pictures from my weekend barbecue would compel 17 people to give me a thumbs-up, but it happened.  So this fool from my party last night makes some big statement about social networking, and all the other fools guffaw at how smart he is, and how they’d never though of that, and how right he is, meanwhile I laugh quietly to myself thinking of what an idiot my old neighbor looks like right now, because cars aren’t flying; and someday in a hundred years when there is no mental internet I will laugh at this man for how foolish I knew he would look...and it will be a hearty laugh.