Today in Undeniable Catchiness

More on why this song is so successful and how you, too, can create an unreliable narrator for your song by pop music god sasha frere-jones

I Love You, I've Missed You

God this is so great. I am so happy to be sitting in front of a computer and typing. This feels amazing. I travel across the world, do all of these touristy things that cost a bajillion dollars, and literally all I want to do is sit, here, in a room, alone, unbothered, and try to talk to you, dear anonymous person. Please continue to read.

Facebook Pictures of Israel

A girl I met on the trip in Israel just tagged me in 14 pictures. I just looked at them. I'm now supposed to either approve or disapprove of them. I'm not sure. I know we usually disapprove of pictures when we look ugly in them, but I think I want to disapprove of these pictures on moral grounds. They are not pictures of me. The Steven in these pictures looks really fucking pissed off. I look vacant and checked-out. They were taken during the week of the birthright trip, when we were going everywhere all the time, and I was constantly posing for different photographs with different people and it looks like I've forgotten where I am and even who I am in them. I'm just sort of there, hovering, like a cardboard cut-out, with a smile-sneer on my face. A sort of "ohfuckingdamnit okay I'll be in this picture" kind of face. It's a roll full of cardboard stevens. Do ignore.

By the Way...

The last post was about Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem (which I haven't experienced on my own yet) so I'm talking about a city that's supposedly the new york of Israel. Soon I'll be in the fucking holiest city of all- Jerusalem. I was there with birthright (the free sexfest israel trip any American jew can go on so long as they are able to prove they have jew parents) but I was being inundated with pro-Israeli propaganda constantly (more on that later) and couldn't blog, much less think.

Will I feel anything going to Jerusalem on my own? Will I start to "get" religion? Will the men bowing in front of a giant wall and mumbling to themselves look any less insane to me? Stay tuned.

The First Obligatory Israel Post

HAY! Wanna hear about Israel? No? I don't blame you. It's kind of an exhausted topic huh? Quite frankly, my brain tends to shut off when I even hear the word because I know I'm about to get an earfull of someones insufferably well-informed "opinion" on the "conflict." I've literally been to dinner parties and walked away from conversations about Israel. It's just so...college. Or something. But I'm here, actually in Israel, so I guess I'll try to think of something to say. God this is hard. I sort of feel like I'm firebombing the old city and simultaneously pissing on my ancestor's grave. I certainly can't think of anything nice to say.

All fellow Jews listen to this: Israel is the absolute worst possible place to feel like you're "getting away from it all." I know what your friends said and they're wrong. You're not getting away from anything here. If anything you're immersing yourself in all the weird cultural corners of "what it means to be a jew." You will be asked what you want to do when you grow up a thousand times. You will be pestered. You will be lectured to. You will see elements of your mother in women you meet. You will see elements of your father in men you meet. Do not expect to relax. Expect to argue. If you're from Seattle, consider yourself very ill-prepared. If you're a crier, don't expect a shoulder. Everyone was in the army and they cover their sadness with anger.

Israelis are loud. They're rude. They're provincial. They sort of sprawl out messily. They're unapologetically obsessed with money and status and they don't put a smile on their face when they're pissed off at the world. I like them and I hate them. I am them. I'm not them. One thing I've been grappling with is the idea that the Israelis live the way American jews would live if we weren't so bound by the unspoken social, sexual and moral codes of these aryan United States. But I no longer think this is true. They're a completely different people.

Okay okay, so it's not all bad. I do enjoy the national past time of commiseration. At any given moment, I can communicate my disgust with my current situation to any Israeli around me with a sad, wry smile and get a sad, wry smile in return. But is that zionism or whatever? I think not.

One other thing: I'm really sick of being gay here. Are you listening, GOD? Can you make it easier for me to have Gaydar please? It's fucking impossible to tell anything. Everyone's well-dressed, men have stereotypical lisps, everyone's got one "arm across the shoulder"of their "best friend" and yet they're all "straight" and offended by my "accusation."

I complain about it to everyone I meet, but I should really stop expecting commiseration. Everyone likes to believe it's not a big deal here (unless you're trying to make out with a Hasid) and if you have a grievance with life's more unsavory elements in general, step in line. There are a million people in front of you. As a gay man, you're standing behind the Palestinians. Do you really want to stand there? At least everyone knows someone they want to set you up with. You'll have to explain numerous times that gays don't uniformly fall in love with their own people. There are worse things. You know it's true.

Is it pretty here? Yeah. It is. It really is. I mean, for one it's sunny (don't hate me!) and there's this thing called "Jerusalem stone" everywhere which is this gorgeous brushed brick everyone uses to build things and when it's sunny outside buildings literally glow. But there's not as much innovative architecture in Tel Aviv as I expected (thanks for the lies, Wallpaper). Sure they've stolen a little Bauhaus architecture from London, and there's a bit of a UNESCO Paris feel to the apartments in Tel Aviv but talking about it seems more like exoticizing hideous old architecture than lauding anything innovative. And it's hard finding things to buy. Perhaps I've been visiting overly-touristy areas but if I have to see one more olive branch or shining city on the hill glazed on to a plate I'm going to punch a baby. They're not just in Jerusalem...played out Judaica is everywhere. What did I expect? I don't know. That will be the new theme of this blog: Steven's expectations routinely getting fucked up the ass. Steven blogging about how traveling is so hard. What a painful, terrible life I lead. Enjoy the schadenfreude.

HI

You know what's really annoying to me? Trying to think while on vacation. So you know what I will not be doing? Writing on this thing. For a few days.

On Trying to Teach

This is from an email I sent to a teacher I worked with this past quarter:

Being able to communicate with you after class gave me a glimpse into the life of a university teacher and all the insecurities, stress and magic of it. To you, the class was a bunch of light bulbs in need of electricity, and you were constantly worried about whether or not you were providing enough voltage. To me, they were the students I wanted to escape from, the reason why my mother invested in an SAT tutor and a college counselor and the reason why I spent so much time applying to so many schools- so I wouldn't be stuck here, where everything felt just the same as it did in high school, where you could get away with writing all the short stories in your English class about growing up gay and the teacher would give you an A for effort (and because he was afraid of offending you and being labeled un-PC), where success was measured in how often you showed up to class and whether or not you paid attention, not in your ideas or analysis or criticism or intellectualism.

But, I suppose, I'm starting to further understand how to make the system work for me- must be in leadership roles (check) must communicate with professors (check) must not be snooty (B- for effort?).

There were a few moments that changed me. First came when I had to lead a short discussion section. I got up in front of the class and I had to say something about the film festival book, and how the festival circuit actually exploited good films, did nothing to further the art form, and was essentially a name-game networking event that scared indie filmmakers and delighted journalists ("so many brushes with stardom and rivalries and politics!"). I got up and, looking into the eyes of my fellow students, couldn't fathom a word that wouldn't make me sound like an intellectual snob. My entire prep, all of my thoughts, somehow revolved around what made this book a good piece of journalism, why it was news, what worked about his use of language.

I had to think of something to say that related to the curriculum (and fast! all the staring!) that didn't further alienate me from them. I believe I said something about how this book, unlike the last critique we had read (which sounded more like an angry blogger rant), was more of an accessible critique, perhaps because the journalist knew that his purpose was to educate the populace about an exceedingly complicated arena of art and commerce through whimsy and non-judgmental observation, and not to indoctrinate the reader with slatherings of opinions (something academic writers tend to do all the time).

None of which is relevant to your course! This anecdote I had revolved around writing, and there are so many writers who think about writing all the time but I guess what I realized was, like, who cared? I was a teacher at this moment, not the kid sitting in the back of English class. I had responsibilities. It was scary and I realized what a juggling act teaching must be, finding this way for your brain, with it's myriad of thoughts (some productive, some self-defeating) to work in harmony with the brains of everyone around you. To pace yourself so the thoughts will sink in everywhere. To look at the class but not in their eyes (never the eyes!) and try to gracefully tie just about everything to your syllabus (how do you do this?)

There were other moments. Lots of other moments. There was the moment I filmed the commercial, where I really felt like I was actually lending some sort of creative clearance to the endeavor, like I could leverage my loopy sense of creative entitlement toward the greater good ( and then it got deleted...) There was the moment I started atanarjuat and had to fast forward through parts of it and not come off like I was unsympathetic toward silence and absence in nonwhite narratives. There was the time I said the words "this hurt our aesthetics" or whatever. There was the weird look people gave me for being associated with the Stranger, that made me feel like they were practically expecting my whole routine to be very off the cuff, whereas yours was polished and refined. I got to revel in their juvenilia (is that a word? it should be a word), and be occasionally juvenile around them, but you got their professional ready-to-work smiles and "sure thing" glances. I'm not sure who should be jealous of whom.

All of which to say is...teaching is hard. I have no idea how you do it. You are some kind of wonder woman balancing all of these conflicting things (does fun make people learn? how do you create fun? what if they're having too much fun?) I mean, I honestly feel like I learned more than two credits worth of information, even though I probably only deserve two credits since I didn't really do a whole lot. For a whole quarter, I got to occupy the brain of a college professor, and was privy to all of her off-the-cuff thoughts and emotional reactions. For a journalist, that's called a gold mine. For a student, it's practically unheard-of. So, a genuine thanks. It was a fascinating, frustrating, endlessly insightful ride, and not something I will soon forget.

Cafe Presse's Smelly Cheese

I'm a total wuss with stinky cheese. The smell horrifies me, it makes me want to gag, I don't understand how people put the cheese close to their face, much less down their mouth.

I'm at cafe presse right now doing homework, and every time someone brings out a cheese platter (which is literally every other second here) it's like someone is sticking their belly button lint up my nostrils with force and saying "this is what you get for waiting until the night before your final to start studying!"

It's like eating out of a dumpster. I don't see the difference. It's like going and sitting in a dumpster and eating whatever curdled cottage cheese is sitting in there and then paying the dumpster for the time it spent letting the cottage cheese go bad.

Or it's like giving a blow job to your food.

Both make you gag. Seriously, people. How do you eat this? How is it not like eating your own throw up?

Oh, and don't bother googling "smelly cheese". All you'll get is this article about a boy who's ears ended up smelling like smelly cheese forever because he never washed back there.

"Lesson learned the hard way, cheddar."

Update! apparently the correct term is "stinky" cheese. Not smelly. And its fans are bountiful and loud. I stand by my proclamation. People: you disgust me.

TINA FEY STOLE SOMETHING FROM MY BLOG!

Apparently she was also accused of clogging her toilet by her manager. Either that or she found my blog entry on the same subject and said "ha ha ha ha ha ha I will steal that!" Either that or I'm a hack journalist and this is a common accusation.

Goodbye Seattle

on the eve of my departure for israel, i have a few notes on the media in seattle.

in journalism, it doesn't seem like the truth is enough to carry any piece. it's got to have drama. it's got to be sarcastic. it's got to be incredibly cynical. if it's a music article, it's got to have a bajillion analogies and go on forever. if it's a news piece, it has to rebble rouse a blue state demographic.

.....we could and should ask more from our media. they're not as engaged as they should be. they're kind of freaked out by the power we've given them, so they crack jokes about how incompetent they are, but they're actually incredibly smart. they're just operating under insane and weird pressures from a seemingly infinite sea of angry internet people hungry for things to get even angrier about. its a weird set of pressures, and im not sure if the resulting writing is as good as it could be. im not sure a collection of blogs is what the future of the media should look like. i do find it fragmented and alienating, and im sure i'm not the only one. it's not like i long for the days when the nightly newscast was the only thing people saw...but this...this obsessive need to increase one's social capitol, to invent a taste, a brand, a point of view wholly unique from the teeming masses, to be funny and provocative on a daily basis.... it's a bit of an unreasonable expectation to have for a journalist.

traditionally, journalists go out and report the news. now we're being asked for our opinions in order to stay in the game of simply reporting the news. we have to carve out an online identity when we don't actually know anything about the world. we have to fake it. we have to pretend we're the expert, and get tomatoes thrown at us from anonymous internet folk the entire time.

in front of the computer, all you gain is intellectual knowledge. it feels like learning, but it's just getting fed spin and trying to figure out where the truth lies under all the spin. it's exhausting. and what makes a good blog story is rarely the truth. it's more a heightened emotional reaction to something. you know you're attracted to the rants on blogs for a reason- it's because you're consuming someone else's reaction to an event. it's infinitely more interesting because you're literally looking at a news story through the eyes of someone you know and (perhaps) trust to cut through the bullshit. any impartial news story pales in comparison because it's just a news story. a blog entry has layers and layers of intellectual fodder.

first there's the event, then there's the impartial story about the event, then there's the commentary on the impartial story about the event, then there's the commentary on the commentary on the impartial story about the event. then there are the commentors who argue with the writer. then there are the commentors who argue with the commentors. then there's the dude who twitters the commentor comments, and then there's the person who responds to the twitter. there's an enormous amount of information to consume, most of it asinine, occasionally fascinating or illuminating.

a bit of a bright point- there is a sort of candidness with the reader that gawker has, and when you strip away all of their creative resentment, all the bickering about who is more deserved of our attention and all the bitchy things they say about people who aspire to do anything with their lives, i think it's actually a really great candidness. i think there's something to be said for remaining a complete outsider. maybe the ideal media would sound like n+1, or the believer or BUTT. something fearlessly intellectual or completely raw and confessional. not necessarily angry or critical, just honest. better for something to express a relentless introspection than to hide behind a smart ass writing style or a voice that condescends. it seems riskier because it is riskier. and risk is good.

i know i'll be called out as a hypocrite. yes, i work for the stranger. no, my stories aren't perfect. im not even trying to defend myself. i just like tearing things apart and trying to expose their mechanics. it feels cliche, but i want to figure out how best to proceed, morally. shouldn't that always be the imperative?

and with that, i leave for israel... gorgeous, politically stable israel where everyone is moral and acts with compassion towards everyone around them.