Straight Outta Ignorance: A Non-Rap-Fan's Review Of Straight Outta Compton
So I know nothing about rap. Not that I’m one of those people who sneer “God save me from rap and country music!”- but when I was growing up, the primary exchange of music was The Mix Tape. I like KISS because my friend Dean made me a mix tape of the best KISS songs. I like Frank Zappa because my friend Mark made me a mix tape of Frank Zappa. I like punk because Neal and Rocco made me mix tapes of punk.
I knew no one who liked rap, and hence, never got into rap. As such, my knowledge is sporadic – I know a couple of tunes, but couldn’t pick out a West Coast vs. East Coast beef.
As such, going to see “Straight Outta Compton” was an interesting experience.
First off, “Straight Outta Compton” is a good movie. I have my Pee Test when it comes to films – am I sufficiently interested in this movie that my teacup-sized bladder can distract me? And though SoC was 2.5 hours and a 40-oz drink, I kept my ass in the seat. Great story.
Yet SoC is clearly a movie meant for people other than me. For example: early on, in the studio, the guys talk Eazy-E – who has, until now, provided only their money – into rapping. The music starts up. It’s clearly a familiar riff. Eazy-E steps up to the mic, swaggers a bit –
And blows the line. Off-tempo, terrible delivery, you name it.
The scene still works if you’re ignorant, but clearly this played off of expectations where the audience was ready for the first magic of That Track to drop.
Likewise, SoC has a fair number of Dramatic Pauses where they’re about to announce their new track, or the company they’re starting, and someone asks them what the name is – and – they – hold, for no good reason except to build an anticipation for a Significant Moment that I had no idea was coming.
Hell, they don’t even bother to introduce Suge Knight. He just shows up without introduction. Fortunately, he’s such a menace it becomes clear that he’s a bad guy. Death Row records is presented as a literal hell, complete with torture chambers.
SoC is not a subtle movie. At one point, a character contracts a terminal illness, which is conveyed by them coughing dramatically. Yet in a way that works better – this is an old-fashioned popcorn drama, where everyone’s presented in clear clean lines (Dre is talented but naive! Ice Cube is suspicious but hard-working! Eazy-E wants the money and the women!) and the plot churns along. It’s not subtle, but it’s a big story, and frankly, the Ray Charles biopic attempted to be subtle and it got boring. This is the Greatest Hits track of drama, where if it’s not over-the-top dramatic, fuck it, leave it on the sidelines.
And I spent a lot of the walk home with Gini wondering if this movie was Oscar-worthy. Paul Giamatti put in a great performance, I know that – but I know that because I’ve seen Paul Giamatti work before, and this was different than his other work.
But as for the three actors who played Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and Dr. Dre? I have no idea how to calibrate. I’ve never seen them work before so I don’t know their baseline – Ice Cube looks a hell of a lot like Ice Cube, but that’s because he’s Ice Cube’s son – and I have insufficient familiarity with Dr. Dre to know whether these guys have captured his essence. So was it good acting? Zero clue. They kept my attention in a bombastic script, and that’s all the quality I can speak to.
I know enough not to take this as history. I know that some of the other NWA members got shafted in this biopic because a) there’s not enough space, and b) Dr. Dre and Cube produced it, so guess who gets to be the stars? And I know that it glosses over the fantastic misogyny present in a lot of NWA’s songs and backstage actions, and probably their youth wasn’t as idealized.
Still. A good movie. Brought me up to speed on a lot of the inner tensions, and how fame (and bad contracts, and money) can split friends apart. I’d recommend it, even if you’re basically a rap yutz like me.
The Bullies Don't Actually Know You: A Vital Reminder In How Crowd-Sourced Jerks Work
During the Hugos – the science-fiction Oscars – a friend of mine made a pro-LGBT Tweet about the future of science fiction that caught the attention of the anti-Social Justice crowd. Needless to say, things turned ugly for her fairly quickly.
Watching the insults mutate was a welcome reminder in how bullies work.
At first, they told her to shut up about science fiction, as she apparently didn’t know how things worked in the business. Bad move, as she was an officer of the Science Fiction Writers’ Association for several years, has edited anthologies, and handles the PR for several quality authors. Accusing her of being ignorant is ignorance, and could have been neatly sidestepped by a simple Google search for her name.
When they lost on that front, they moved to accusing her to being undesirable, ugly, and was doing this entirely because she was unable to get laid. Which also doesn’t work. She’s stunningly attractive, and while I can’t speak to the fine details of her social life, she does not appear to have any problems attracting companionship.
When that didn’t work, they then…
Oh, does it matter? It doesn’t, really. Because that’s how bullies function. They really don’t care who you are – they’ll just keep flinging shit at the walls until one of the insults eventually sticks.
Which isn’t to say that it doesn’t hurt when they eventually fumble onto an insult that describes you – but some of that pain comes from the shock of Oh, they’ve found me out, and really, they haven’t. Most Internet pileups are an insult dictionary-attack: they haven’t guessed your password because they have a deep and meaningful relationship with you, they’ve guessed it because they have this list of “the 10,000 most common personality flaws” and they tried each one out in descending order until they stumbled across yours.
These insults are fundamentally meaningless because they don’t actually know what the fuck they’re saying. They just hated what you had to say, and are trying to shame you into shutting up by trying keys at random in your door.
They will literally say anything if they think it’ll make you feel bad.
And that’s the inverse of how society usually works: You smell like funky cheese, so your lover rejects you. You’re incompetent, so your boss fires you. You’re boring, so your friends don’t invite you out. All painful, but it’s a clear sequence of cause and effect – here’s the reason, here’s the consequences.
Whereas when bullies come around, they have decided upon the consequence – this bitch needs to feel bad. And then they start hunting for reasons to justify the consequences.
Yet if you watch carefully, their reasons don’t actually make sense most of the time. Hey, you’re a – no I’m not. Well, then you – no, I don’t. Certainly you must – I’ve never done that in my life, actually.
Now, none of this isn’t to say that an internet dogpile doesn’t suck syphilitic moose ass. It does. It’s always a little unnerving to realize that a bunch of people are working their asses off to try to make you cry. And alas, society has trained most of us that if a hundred people are jeering and pointing, you must have done something wrong.
But you haven’t. You said something they didn’t like – something they can’t actually argue with, because if they were smart enough to debate your concepts, they’d be off explaining why what you said was wrong. And having lost the intellectual argument due to a lack of functioning neurons, they have now moved to the Shut this person up phase and will now throw bricks until one of them hits.
Chances are, they’ll eventually luck upon a bad description of you that fits. But remember: they don’t actually care about that. All they want is your tears followed by your silence.
You’re allowed either tears or silence, you know. Engaging is exhausting. Nobody’s obliged to battle phase-shifting morons.
But if you really wanna show those fuckers up, want to enrage them in the best way possible? Keep talking. Ignore them, and concentrate on spreading that original message they couldn’t effectively deny. Because when you focus on that message and properly categorize the thousands of insults they’re blindly trying out on you, you come to realize that these aren’t insults but a modified jamming technique – filling the air with thousands of messy signals in an attempt to drown the broadcast that terrifies them.
The insults feel personal. But just like what happened to my smart and competent friend, they only feel personal because they tried out several variations of insults that were so laughably not you that they didn’t fit, running down a long list until they found something that jarred.
That’s not actually personal. They don’t know you.
They just know they want to shut you up.
Why Assuming "Everyone Is A Jerk" Makes Your Life Better.
Here’s how I survive, folks: I assume everyone’s a jerk on some level.
Not on every level, natch – it’s rare that someone’s a through-and-through jerk. But even the nicest guy turns out to have this vague yet palpable bigotry towards, say, Pakistanis, and the sweetest girl you ever knew turns out to think Donald Trump has some good points.
Now, if you don’t assume everyone’s got a little jerkiness rolling around in them, then you feel betrayed – my God! I thought you were perfect! How could you let me down? You thought you’d found the person who was Not A Jerk, and it turns out that when you look at them from the right angle there’s a big chunk of Jerk sticking out of their forehead.
Whereas I just assume everyone has some jerk in them: celebrities, friends, author-buddies, tiny babies, Peter Dinklage, whoever. I just haven’t viewed them from the correct angle to see that jerkiness, but I assume it’ll show up sooner or later.
Doesn’t mean I can’t like ’em. I think once you resign yourself to the fact that everyone’s jerky in the right circumstances, you come to rest a little easier: you don’t have to hunt for perfect friends. You can like people who’ve got some serious flaws – which is good, because you’ve got some serious flaws, and hopefully people will like you.
This is not to say you shouldn’t be outraged when Your Best Buddy turns out to be a strident anti-vaxxer, of course. Call them out! Argue! Stir up a fuss! But the “everyone’s a jerk” theory subtracts that feeling of betrayal that saps your day and makes you wonder how you’ll function when you haven’t found the True Person To Serve As Your Inspiration.
Everyone can inspire you, when viewed from a certain angle. Take that inspiration to make yourself better.
And stop feeling like today’s jerkassery has ruined your faith in humanity. A reasonable definition of “humanity” includes “jerkiness,” for honestly, that’s what we are. Mostly nice. With a solid streak of “jerk” running through us.
Fuck Destiny. Try Work.
Occasionally, someone asks me, “Do you feel that Gini’s your soul mate? You’ve been dizzyingly, rapturously in love for fifteen years – and isn’t that destiny?”
Fuck no it isn’t.
Now, Gini and I liked each other a lot, which was the key to why we managed to somehow forge a connection over the Internets. We had a similar, if evil, sense of humor. We shared the same concept of fairness. We both liked fucking a whole lot.
But when we got together, man did we have a lot to work on.
Yeah, we live in an idyllic wonderland these days – but don’t ever forget we built this fucking thing, brick by brick. If you’d seen us a year after our marriage, you would have thought we were headed for divorce. Hell, at one point Gini flat-out told me she didn’t love me any more, and we spent six months figuring out what to do when that happened.
We fought until dawn sometimes, screaming as we slowly tried to determine how to be kind to each other without sacrificing the things that let us function.
And slowly, we learned each other’s secret language of love. She learned I needed warm, Sunday morning snuggles; I learned she needed clean kitchens. We picked up on the signals that told us when we felt justified but were acting like utter choads. We learned how to apologize without clogging up the joint with denials, defenses, and backpeddling.
After about three years, it got good.
After about six, it got fantastic, and has yet to stop improving.
At fifteen, it’s bliss. It’s our refuge. It’s probably the best thing we’ve achieved together.
But if you tell me that “destiny” brought us together, you’re telling me that destiny did the work. Fuck that fickle bitch. Destiny maybe put us in the same chat room together – or maybe that was her slacker brother Chance – and so I’ll be eternally grateful to someone out there. But when I was seething with neurotic jealousy and Gini was squashing her feelings so deep down even she didn’t know how furious she was, where the hell was destiny?
No. We did this. And I shudder to think of what would have happened if I’d waited for cloud-castles to float by bearing my soul-mate on a sweet tide of incense and pheromones.
Fuck that. My castle started with two people, two shovels, and a quarry that would have broken a sane man’s back. Look at our hands: they’re full of callouses, our fingernails crusted with dirt and blood, and some days the west wing collapses and we walk out with these tools we built ourselves to prop the fucking thing up again.
This is no dream. This is hard work.
And it is glorious.
The Family That Gets A Tattoo Together, Stays Together.
I met my wife in a Star Wars chat room.
I did not see her as someone I ever thought I would romance.
This is because she was married, and I was engaged, and as such we happily kept to the main topic of the Compuserve forums: arguing relentlessly about anything we damn well felt like. There was a lot of Star Wars debate (did Luke truly fall to the Dark Side, were ysalamiri a dumb idea, why the hell did they have to fly through the trench for twenty miles to get to the exhaust port, couldn’t they just have started like 2000 meters away?)…
…and there was a lot of political debate, couched in Star Wars hokum so it wouldn’t get moved to another thread. (“The Saudis, who have absolutely no reason to lower the price of oil to help our national economy out, live in a desert as dry as Tatooine.”)
But mostly, there was a love of Star Wars. And my future wife and I savaged each other in snarling debates for years, long enough that she got a divorce and my fiancee walked out and one day we realized we were in love.
So we got married. (And I moved to Alaska, which is a different story.)
So Star Wars bonds us. We had Luke and Leia on top of our wedding cake. (We have an OTP that defies canon, what can I say?) And with the new Star Wars coming out, Gini was thinking of getting a tattoo.
And I told her, We should both get a tattoo. Together.
Of course we agreed this was a great idea.
But the funny thing is, a few weeks ago we got this new huge Ultra-HD 70″ television, which our eldest daughter helped us set up. The first film we watched? Star Wars in Blu-Ray, of course.
And what I discovered, much to my thrill, is that though she’s in her late twenties, my eldest daughter is as much a Star Wars nerd as I am. There are activities I think we all share with our parents that we like because it reminds us of family – but without the family there, it’s just sort of Something You Do On Summer Vacations. I mean, maybe your Dad read Winnie the Pooh to you as a kid and you loved that warm feeling of being in his lap, but there’s a difference between loving that experience and reading Winnie the Pooh over and over again when you’re a grownup.
Whereas our kid? She kept pointing out all the tiny details, squeeing at stuff only someone who’d watched this damn film too many times would see. She was as into it as we were, and it was a glory to behold.
We mentioned the tattoo.
She was in.
And then there was our youngest daughter, who we knew also had the Star Wars love when she waited to show her partner Star Wars at our house. Her partner enjoyed it enough, but my younger kid’s constantly squeezing her hand and going “HERE IT COMES, NO THIS IS THE BEST PART” probably was a distraction.
Youngest daughter is overseas right now on a college trip, but she’s coming back to town in September. But we Facebook-messaged her.
She was in.
And so plans are tenuous, but the plan is to go in the week the new Star Wars movie releases and get four Star Wars tattoos together, as a family. We’re not coordinated enough to get matching tattoos, which I think is appropriate – we’re a raucous bunch, we disagree, and us having all the same style would never fly.
Yet if all goes well, the four of us will ink our special bond permanently. We love Star Wars. We love each other. And the movie may suck and suck big-time, but we’ll watch it in the biggest theater in Cleveland with flesh still aching from the needle, knowing that nothing can take our bond away from us.
We survived Phantom Menace. We’ll get through this.
And whenever I look at my tattoo, I’ll think of my wife, and my kids, and the dream we lived together.
Let’s hope this works.