Why Seth MacFarlane Did A Beautiful Job (At What He Was Asked To Do)

My Twitter-feed was a sputtering of fury last night, as Seth MacFarlane let loose a series of offensive jokes.  How dare he make a song about the number of Oscar winners in the audience who’ve gone topless on film?  Jokes about slavery?  Sexual jokes about nine-year-old nominees?  What the fuck?
But there’s two things to remember:
1)  Should my Twitter-friends decide to all watch an episode of Family Guy together, they’d fury-sputter in pretty much the exact same way.
2)  Seth is part of a plan that does exactly what the Academy wanted to do, and he executed perfectly.
First off, I loved last night’s Oscars, but that’s because I love watching train wrecks.  And Seth MacFarlane imploded hideously (as you can see from his dwindling presence as the Oscars went on).  There’s a big difference between making a joke at a celebrity’s expense that they can laugh off, and one that they actually feel bad about.  Billy Crystal, as boring as I find him, is a master of knowing how to take an affectionate poke…
…but think of it this way.  You’re a woman sitting in the theater, waiting to see if you win one of the greatest honors of your life.  This has been your lifelong dream – you’ve dedicated your life to acting, and now after years, all of your peers and fans have thought that you – yes, you – were worthy of getting the greatest honor the industry literally has to offer.  This is Hollywood history.
To be an actress is to be rejected.  You get rejected all the time, sometimes for maddening stuff – you’re not tall enough, your nose is too big – and sometimes for vague reasons that no one ever explains because they don’t have to.  You’re just not right for the part.  So all you can do is double down, try harder and try to get better, and after a decade of clawing your way through constant failure, you get to bask in the night that tells the world that yes, you’ve made it.
Then Seth MacFarlane reduces you to a pair of tits.
That’s why Oscar hosts have such a treacherous job; too toothless, you fail to entertain the audience.  But too sharp, and you make the nominees feel awful on the night they’re trying to celebrate in a way they can’t shake off.  And yes, a lot of those Hollywood guys are prickly and egotistic and thin-skinned, but it’s not a roast.
Seth MacFarlane took a lot of shots that bit deep.  And while I appreciate the funniness of deconstructing these fat cats, it’s like watching Chris Rock rip into Jude Law during his Oscar turn; I think, dude ain’t being asked back.
Your main job is to tweak the stars, gently.  Seth drew blood.
Plus, there’s the problem that Seth MacFarlane can actually construct a good joke.  He’s got a firm grip on the mechanics of comedy; he just thinks making fun of broads and gay guys and black people is hysterical.  And yeah, he hits every target eventually, which is a kind of saving grace, but he tends to focus on the stuff beer-sodden frat boys find really funny.  So you’re gonna find a lot of transgressive humor that hits weak targets (AH HA SPANISH PEOPLE SPEAK FUNNY OH WHO KNEW THAT, AM I RIGHT?).  Which isn’t really funny a lot of the time, at least not to the people who watch Oscar films because they believe in the beauty of the human spirit.
Yet that’s exactly what he was brought in to do.
Was last night’s Oscars an episode of Family Guy?  Family Guy, one of the most popular shows among a young audience?  The very audience that barely watches the Oscars, that the Academy is desperately trying to appeal to?
Yes.  They’re trying.  Just like they tried with Anne Hathaway and James Franco’s misfire a few years ago – hey, what do young kids like?  Can we put that in there?  Shit, if this many young kids ignore us, then in thirty years we won’t be able to get this on network television any more.  We gotta think towards the future.
So they crossed their fingers.  They knew Seth was a risk, and would definitely offend, but maybe he’d bump the demographics enough to save the franchise.  And he made the Oscars into pretty much everything people thought it would be, and if you like Family Guy you probably loved it and if you hate Family Guy well, they knew they were gonna lose you.  But could he walk that fine line between “offensive jokes” and “being mean to the celebrities”?
Nope.  Fell right off.  Look at the stone faces behind Seth when he’s talking to Captain Kirk.  They don’t even give him a laugh for the pretty funny line of “What if I’m the first Oscar host to ever get a bad review?”  He lost them, and never came back.
So next year, they swing back.  Get someone safe so they don’t piss off their established audience. Ratings will be higher this year, but that’s because people actually saw the movies, and probably little to do with Seth himself.
But in a bizarre way, the Oscars are sort of an inverse of comics.  Comics are struggling to stay relevant because yes, much of the industry seems to realize that it’s become a sinkhole of misogyny and stale plots, and all of the people who might write stuff that’s interesting have fled to webcomics.  Some of them want to change.  But they have this core audience – the majority of their remaining sales – who really want to see attractive women stuffed into refrigerators, and you have to satisfy that base while you wildly experiment.  You might try wildly on the sidelines to create a hit that appeals to people who are not mouth-breathing dateless dudes… but that’s a rough thing to do, because you’re trying to craft a hit so big that it appeals to people who don’t read comics, reigniting the industry and creating a whole new genre that saves your business model.  And while you’re trying that, you need to serve up the same dreck to an unthinking audience.
The Oscars are the opposite – they’re staid, stodgy, not all that fun to most of the younger generation, who don’t like the movies they choose, and don’t like how every ceremony goes on frickin’ forever.  So the Academy is trying to be crazy wild, doing things The Kids love, but then they piss off their celebrities (who they need to come back, as watching celebs is the only draw the Oscars have), and they piss off their older viewers.  So they snap back and hey, Billy Crystal.
So.  Seth’s another wild shot in the dark.  They hired him to make it into a Family Guy episode, and that’s what he did.  I bet many of them were holding their nose at the idea.  They were just hoping that, somehow, it would work.

Ferrett Is Tired, But Wants To Say Hi

Howdy.  I have several blog entries I want to write, including one on how women should find dates, but I have no energy to muster.  Last night, I was up until 5:30 because I had a weird reaction to my pain pills where I could not sleep, and today I’m still drugged-out and cannot concentrate.
Yet I still want the interaction of a journal, so I’ll put the ol’ LJ into comments screened mode and ask you: tell me a secret.  (On my real blog, you’re better off just emailing it to me.)  A secret good or bad, strange or mundane, I feel like listening to them today.  And if you want me to respond, tell me, and I may offer advice; if not, it’ll stay between you and me.
All love to you.

Why Facebook Is Gonna Shrink And Die

“We believe, that some of our users, particularly our younger users, are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or a substitute for, Facebook.”
– Facebook’s Annual 10k Report

Up to 61 percent of Facebook’s users have taken a “Facebook vacation” in the last year- stepping away from Facebook for weeks, or even months, at a time.  And it’s not that surprising, really.
Facebook is a job, disguised as a relaxation.
A social network’s number one job is to be fun… well, it is to the people using it, anyway.  To the people who are operating it and trying to make a profit, the number one job is to a) get more customers, and b) get those customers to spend as much time on the site providing data, so c) you can sell ads to them.  There’s nothing new there.
But it does mean that Facebook is constantly pushing you to expand your envelope.  HEY DO YOU KNOW THESE PEOPLE HERE?  And you do, sorta, you hung out with them at a couple of parties, you remember their faces, but you’re not buddies or anything.  But Facebook wants you to know them.  It wants you to be close to all of your friends and relatives and acquaintances and workmates, endlessly treating your social group like it was one homogenous mass.
And it keeps forcing you into awkward, drama-filled situations.  You get friends requests, each of which is laden with mild drama: hey, do you want your fourteen-year-old cousin seeing your pictures of you drinking?  There’s that creepy guy who’s dating your friend – friending him means you’re lending an air of legitimacy to a relationship you’re sure is gonna crumble in three months.  Facebook wants drama.
Or you can just add everybody.  And then treat yourself to a page full of folks you don’t really know and don’t care about, but Facebook’s thrilled!  You’re interacting with more people!  They can mine the crap out of you!
And so basically, because by default it’s got two modes of “BESTIES” and “GOOD PAL,” you wind up hollering your updates into a room full of people you don’t know that well – unless you wanna take the time to manage and maintain a lot of groups.  You know, like Google+ demanded you do, and we saw how well that worked out.  Or you can go through and trim your friends’ list, which again, drama if they find out, and it has all the appeal of cleaning shower grout.
Plus, there are friends you’re happy to leave behind.  There’s a couple of high school buddies I miss, but there was a good reason the rest of us weren’t pals any more; we didn’t have that much in common, and their memories of me are at a time when I was nascent, stupid, experimenting, and pretty dim.  Their good memories of my times are often stuff I wish I hadn’t done, and yet Facebook’s shoving us up against each other like we’re best buds.  Facebook wants you to know everyone you’ve ever known, and particularly for life’s transitions, there are times you’re happy to make a clean breakoff and start over again with new friends.
So you’ve got old buddies you don’t really know, one-time folks you didn’t care about much in the first place, and the awkwardness that every time you make an update, you’re potentially alerting all of them.  Or none of them, if Facebook doesn’t feel like it’s good enough.
The problem is not the socialization, but the way Facebook insists on amplifying that socialization.  You’re not a person, but a corporation, with Facebook as your shareholders demanding growth every year.  You should have more friends.  You should post more photos.  You should check in more.  And yes, that is a job, which theoretically you’re toiling away at for a reward of interacting with your friends in a fun place – but unless you take stern measures to tamp down that pressure, you’re getting less and less interaction with real friends, and more and more interaction with those Facebook designates as your friends.
And the two are not the same.
Now, Facebook is fine for light users, and I think that’s a part of its popularity now.  If you’re my Mom, who uses it to keep tabs on me and her other relatives, she and her twenty buddies are cool.  But she’s put low expectations into it.  But the more effort you put into Facebook, ironically, the harder it becomes to use; who the fuck is that guy?  Why am I tagged in this update?  Why do these app requests never stop?  And so, I think, the biggest users of Facebook who should be getting satisfaction from this are going, “God, I just need to relax.”
I’m not saying Facebook will disappear.  Hey, MySpace is still around.  But what Facebook touts as an appeal is actually a disincentive to teenagers: hey, all your relatives are here!  They want, and quite reasonably, a private space where they can choose who they interact with without Aunt Minnie’s friend request tapping on their shoulder.
The fact is, Facebook wants to wad us all into one human-Katamari, interacting with everyone we’ve ever met.  Which sounds awesome at first blush, but then you come to realize this isn’t how humans interact in real life.  People want different spaces for different things.  And I think eventually, Facebook’s convenience will start to erode as folks realize that hey, the way Facebook keeps pushing me isn’t the way I want to go.  It’ll be slow.  A decade, maybe.  Facebook’s appropriately ubiquitous that its login works on a ton of sites as a one-of, so maybe it’ll even be relevant.
But I think future generations will view Facebook as an “Oh, that’s cute we thought that” experiment – back when the Internet was new and we thought we wanted to be connected to everybody in the same place.  We don’t.  Not really.

Mini Movie Reviews: Django Unchained, Magic Mike, Flight, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Hope Springs

Magic Mike:
Critics were astounded when it turned out that men wanted to watch a movie about male strippers.  This is because critics are dumb.  Magic Mike appeals to men because male strippers are shown as a low-level form of gangsters – having threesomes by the dozens, earning mad cash, part of a clan that only a few six-packed beauties can aspire to.  The bodies on display are for women, sure, but the storyline is pure masculine wish-fulfillment.
Unfortunately, Magic Mike is precisely half a good movie.  The tale of Magic Mike bringing his bro-heim into the fold is compelling, interesting, and clever.  But then the movie gets weighted down by society, where everyone knows that Those People Who Take Off Their Clothes Can Be Up To No Good, and so we are treated to a really tortured, character-wrenching series of plot twists where we see the emotional toll that all of this happiness and freedom brings you, complete with a botched drug deal and backstabbing and OH THESE STRIPPERS, THEY CAN NEVER BE HAPPY.  And so, as payment (spoilers!), Magic Mike has to abandon his club, and all his money, but as his reward he gets the cute, innocent girl he’s wanted to fuck all along.
Yes, society.  Good women are the prize that all men should get for acting wonderfully, and no person can be a sex worker without being secretly miserable and dysfunctional.  Way to go, fellas.
As a side note: the dance sequences in the film are elaborate, creative, and amazing.  One suspects there are a lot of disappointed women turning up at Chippendale’s afterwards.
Flight:
I know what they’re trying to do with this movie, but they fucked it up.
The intent is to ask, “How do you get back to your normal life after a major, life-changing event?”  And the first half hour of Flight, where the plane crashes and only Denzel Washington can save from total wreckage, are riveting.  Denzel earns his Oscar nomination here, because while the plane is plummeting straight down at 10,000 feet a minute and the crew is panicking, Denzel is barking our orders, calmly telling everyone what to do in the attempts to fix this.  Except, because Denzel’s acting is pitch-perfect, you realize that Denzel realizes just how bad things are, and is pretty sure he’s about to die, but is refusing to let it get to him.  (Perhaps, in part, because he’s drunk.  But he’s also a damn good pilot.)
The problem is that the most intense part of the film comes at the beginning; hell, you could have ended Flight at 34:00 and I would have been entirely satisfied.  But no, we then have to follow an alcoholic through his increasing assholery… so we not only have the aftershock of a lot of talking heads, which feels like a come-down after GOD DAMN THAT PLANE CRASHED, but the lead is entirely unsympathetic.  So we’re feeling drained, and though we don’t care.
The ending is also a large portion of bullshit.  We also probably did not need the ridiculously stereotyped porn star/junkie, fucking desperately for cash.
Django Unchained:
Like Flight and Magic Mike, this was a beautiful first half of the film.  The segments where Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz meet and become friends, with Christoph training Django how to be a bounty hunter… it was beautiful.  There were moments of true friendship, laughs as race was played with overtly, and some great action sequences.
Then there’s an hour and a half at Leonardo DiCaprio’s mansion when there should have been forty-five minutes.  And to drag the movie out further, one of the characters does a truly stupid thing that’s totally at odds with everything he’s been shown to be beforehand, at a time when he had effectively won.  (I mean, seriously, a little humiliation aside, he’d gotten everything he set out to do.)  It just felt tedious at the mansion (though I loved DiCaprio’s performance), with too many mundane plot twists and not enough forward motion.  I mean, if you’re gonna have people speaking, sure!  Have DiCaprio whip out the skull of his old slave servant and whap it on the table.  But we needed more skull-whapping moments, and less long dinner conversations.
Also, though I enjoyed it, I kept thinking, What would be the reaction if this had been made by Spike Lee?  And if we hadn’t had the ha ha, the guy directing this is on our side, this movie would have freaked the fuck out of America, and so it’s basically a multi-million dollar exercise in white privilege.  That doesn’t dismiss the goodness of the film, of course, but realistically it proves that this is all about the messenger.   And Tarantino’s in-film assertion (who knows whether he believes it) that the reason the slaves didn’t revolt is because they were meek and not as good as Django was, just maaaaaybe, a little facile given that at at least three points, Django only escapes out of purest fucking luck.  Hey, great to think that the point of the entire slavery thing is that blacks need to be more badass, but if Samuel Jackson had limped into that shed literally a minute later, we’d be talking about a very dead and humiliated Django.
So lots of problems.  Still entertaining.  But hoo boy.
Beasts of the Southern Wild:
Like the Battlestar Galactica remake, I did not enjoy this so much as I appreciated it.  It was beautifully done, a window to a level of poverty and culture that we don’t see much, but the whole thing was catastrophically painful and depressing.  Some seemed to think it was an uplifting fairy tale, to which I ask them exactly what brand of crack they are smoking.
This is the perfect Oscar movie.  Brilliant performances, saddening, you leave the theater feeling wrung of all happiness.  Good work, Oscars.
Hope Springs
This is a perfect little movie.  It doesn’t shoot high, restraining itself to the sex life of a very frigid old couple, but it hits every note it sets out to.  In a weaker Oscar year, I think Tommy Lee Jones could (and should) have been nominated for his performance.
A lot of people don’t like this film because, well, it’s about old people learning to fuck again, and OMG EYEW.  To which I say, fuck you, old people have every right to fuck and even more, and your disgust shouldn’t enter into it.  But Hope Springs is also a small movie; there’s no outside interference.  Steve Carell plays their therapist, in a truly amazing role because he’s actually a perfectly helpful therapist. He’s not trying to break them apart, he’s not incompetent, he is just in fact there to help, and he bats probably 85% in terms of giving good advice.
So what you have is a paintcan movie, where two people are effectively locked in a room until they work out their problems.  It’s good, subtle work, and enjoyable.
Plus, if there’s another film where Meryl Streep is sucking off somebody in a movie theater, I can’t think of it.
 

I Drummed. And Oh My God, This Is Both Terrifying And Exhilarating

I’ve been a drummer on and off throughout my life.  It’s damn good exercise.  It’s why my arms were always in decent shape; a half hour smashing skins, and you do have acceptable biceps, even on an otherwise pudgy body.  My calves and biceps were always a draw, even if I didn’t want to show you my belly.
So when I heard that the doctor had given me the okay to drum, I was a little concerned.  Thanks to all my ribs still healing, I can’t lift anything over eight pounds – and my chest still clicks in disconcerting ways as the bones settle into place.  (This is normal, by the way, if both painful and intensely weird.)  So did my doctor understand drumming?  Would I lift my arms high to smash those cymbals and tear something vital?
But drumming today was a fucking revelation.
The song I chose to start with was Taio Cruz’s Dynamite, mainly because it was a) mid-tempo, and b) symptomatic of a new start.  And I played, gingerly at first, until I realized that this was all in my wrists, biceps, and shoulders.  I could hit.  And hit hard.  Hard enough to send the cymbals shuddering, fill the basement with the full-on slap of the snare.
And I did that for twenty-five minutes.  Straight.
And walked upstairs.
What you don’t understand was that the last time I drummed, I did it for half an hour – and then, so exhausted, I had to sit down on the La-Z-Boy and recuperate for half an hour.  I attributed this to being out of shape.  To hating exercise.
What I did not attribute it to was a heart pumping 1% of its total capacity.
But in retrospect, my last attempt to get into shape was failing ridiculously for weird reasons.  I used to be able to run a 5k with relative ease.  But in California, after six weeks of hard training on the stationary bicycle, I went for a jog with Gini – and I barely made a mile before collapsing, wheezing, propping myself up by a stop sign.  At the time, I thought, jeez, I guess bicycling uses really different muscles than jogging.  Still, I was baffled because I was able to do half an hour’s workout on the bicycle, why were my lungs failing me so badly now?
Now I know: I was dying.
And now I know: I’ve been upgraded.  I worked out, hard, for nearly half an hour, after having no aerobic exercise for six weeks.  And I didn’t breathe that hard.  And when I was done, rather than having to collapse into a chair, I practically jogged the fuck upstairs.
I didn’t have heart surgery.
I got a fucking upgrade.

Behind On Comments, Ahead On Life (Theoretically)

A couple of random notes:
1) I’m very behind on replying to comments these days.  That’s bad.  But it’s how I segment.
See, I do things in weird batches – I reply to emails in batches, reply to Twitter in batches, write blog entries in batches, and then respond to comments in batches.  And I’ve been trying to keep up writing on the blog, as it’s useful for me to think about as I recover… but then I get to the evening, when I usually reply to everyone, and I’m just worn out.
So there’s tons of good comments I just haven’t responded to.  I’m still reading them, and I don’t want y’all to feel ignored.  I’m just a little more low on energy than I’d like.
2) I got many lovely things that cheered me up while I was recovering, and I intend to make a rather large thank-you post on that.  But I haven’t had the energy for that either.  That will happen, though, as you all are so goddamned generous.
Fun fact: some days I get through this by pretending to be the guy you think I am instead of the frail, whiny human being who is actually here.  It helps.
3)  Saw the cardiologist yesterday, and many good things have arisen: With padding, I can now ride in the front seat!  (Before, my sternum was so fragile that the impact of an airbag would have crushed my chest, so I rode in the back like a toddler.  Though it will take six months before it’s fully healed, sad to say.)  I can get on the treadmill, with supervision!  And, he thinks, I may be even able to drum!
Now I have to choose the first track I drum to.  This will be tricky, because it has to be a relatively simple, not-too-fast tune that a) I enjoy, and b) is anthemic, and c) not cliched.  Some tunes are fun – “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” seemed like a good choice, but it’s up-tempo and involves a lot of quick motion with my hands, which I may not be up to.  So I’m flipping through my iPod selection and trying to narrow it down.  It’s an interesting choice.  But beginnings must be special, you know?
 

Look, I'm Only Gonna Say This Once: Here's What Polyamory Looks Like

For those of you not paying attention, I had a heart attack followed by a triple bypass a few weeks back.  That’s condensed my living down to bare basics.
This sort of thing traumatizes your wife, if you have one, because ZOMG YOU ALMOST DIED.  (I technically should have; as a 43-year-old man, most of us with cardiac problems pop out because “heart attack” is not yet on the list of problems we could have, and so we pop a Tums and hit the club and then our heart explodes.)
So Gini and I have been reassessing and rebuilding and reassuring our life-long bond.  For me, the most traumatic thing about this whole “having my ribs cracked open like a crabshell” thing is NOT the reminder of my mortality, NOT the life changes I will now have to have to ensure my arteries don’t clog again, but the fact that when I first woke, paralyzed and alone and choked and in darkness, my wife was not there.
I had always known that Gini could be taken from me.  What I did not realize what that I could be taken from her.  And in my darkest hour, due to circumstances that were utterly not her fault, I woke alone and terrified and lacking the love of my life.
Whereas Gini?  Spent a week not knowing whether she’d get to keep the love of hers.
That’s our life.  We’re poly.  Yet at the core of our many loves is this deep and unique tangle of affections, this tight bond that links me to Gini in something far beyond marital bliss.  We are central.  We are essential.  And it’s not that we do not love our other partners dearly, for we do – Gini called her boyfriend Steve for support through this, and I had a few panics when I couldn’t talk to my girlfriend A.  We don’t treat our secondaries as disposables, to be jettisoned during times of crisis.  That shit is awful.
But my lovers understand: as much as I do love you deeply, if there’s some crisis where I have to choose, my wife will always come first.  (And considering most of our partners have been married, we understand the reverse as well.)  We’ve organized our lives in a way such as to avoid such senseless conflicts, clearing a space just for us so that when we date it can be “us” time…. but I always remember what Gini told me when I moved in with her and her daughters.
“You know I love you,” she told me.  “But if the house catches on fire, and I can only carry out one of you, it’s gonna be my kids.  You’re okay with that, right?”
And I was.  Because, well, the agreement I had with her is that the kids came first.  And anyone who dates us knows that Gini and I are married, and we’re doing everything we can to avoid any errant flames… but should there be a Sophie’s Choice, Gini’s well-being will sadly come first.
In other words, we’re the “classic” poly model: an absolute love at the center of it, with many spokes around the edges.  It’s the model the media likes to report upon.   Because it’s basically, you know, monogamy+.
And this is what I will say to you:
WE ARE NOT THE FACE OF POLYAMORY.
We have a central relationship that takes priority; many have perfectly functioning relationships that don’t need a “primary” of any sort.  We have plenty of rules; many loving people get by without them.  We have a marriage at the core to protect; many don’t.
There was an article recently about how the mainstream media, when it discusses poly, focused upon people like Gini and me.  (Well, more attractive people, but still.)  And that presents a misleading picture to the world, as polyamory is NOT “a core of two and some folks on the fringe.”  (Which is not how we’d describe ourselves anyway.)
Polyamory takes many forms.  It is the opposite of monogamy.  It is a wholly new relationship structure, where a single diatomic bond can be replaced by hundreds of strange configurations, many of which can only be expressed in complex diagrams, assuming everyone involved even feels a need to map that out.
I frequently write about what it takes to do polyamory well, and in that sense I’m trying to cover some basics that work for most people: have few illusions about who you’re dating, don’t lie, don’t think that NRE is an actual functioning model for a long-term relationship, communicate effectively.  But somewhere, there’s a person out there who puts all of my suggestions to the lie as they work just fine without doing a damn thing I said.
I believe Huey Lewis called that “The Power of Love.”
In short: speaking as one of those media-friendly power couples, don’t believe the hype.  Poly takes on many shapes, and many good strong relationships don’t require a “primary” to function.  Hell, many don’t need a hierarchy of sweeties.  Many don’t need rules beyond “play it safe, kids.”
When you try to fit polyamory into a box that will make the world comfortable, you’re probably doing it wrong.  Poly is messy, gloriously so.  We’ve got what works for us, but that doesn’t mean it should work for you.
Find your own path.  Preferably one that doesn’t involve a triple bypass.