The Tears Or Otherwise Unpleasant Feelings of a Clown

Even I get sick of myself sometimes, I have to admit. Not in the sense of "I hate Trevor Seigler," but just in the sense that I tend to joke around...a lot. I mean, if there's an opportunity for a crack, I'll make it. If it comes at someone else's expense, I might feel bad about it afterwards (and often do), but in the moment, I'm rolling with it, never letting it stand in the way of a good punchline.

That being said, I can be a dick.

It all started as a defense mechanism, this cutting up and not taking things seriously. Mostly it was a way to offset the obvious scorn and ridicule that came from my peers during that period of developmental hell known as "adolescence," when even lifelong friends come asunder on the shores of Peer Pressure Cliffs and Popular Crowd Aspiration Raceways (my metaphors are clumsy, like my attempts to woo the ladies, but I mean well). It just so happens, if I don't mind bragging a bit, that I have a gift for the witty rejoinder (even if it's not all that witty if you're unaware of nineteenth-century British prime ministers, for instance), and this is, like alcoholism or depression, something that runs in my family.

Many of my family members when I was growing up traded in moments where they could let their guard down and be emotionally honest for the opportunity to make a fart joke, often at my expense. As a sensitive child (no, really; I can't stand perfume, which made accompanying my grandmother to Belk's for a new pair of slacks its own special version of Hell. Headaches galore), I was coarsened enough by such treatment to eventually get my own back, and I'm afraid that the joke had often replaced the heartfelt statement in my everyday interactions with people, be them close friends with whom I have a deep bond or casual acquaintances that will never see me again.

Lately, I've been working through the fact that, for all intents and purposes, my jokes sometimes aren't funny, and sometimes they're even cruel, and sometimes, dare I say it, I say them at times when really, it would be better to be nice and just let the moment pass without a comment by myself. It is true about comedians having dark souls full of inner turmoil (I've read enough biographies to confirm this fact), and unhappiness is often the root cause of great art. For me, though, it's usually the root of a joke that doesn't land, or lands too well, and leaves the other person thinking that I'm kind of an asshole.

But on the other hand, joking around is a way to beat back the three-headed monster that encircles my family and myself, and many other people in the world suffering from the lack of a good laugh to take their minds off what ails them. When I say something funny and it's not cruel, not at someone's expense, and it makes the other person laugh, that's a pretty good feeling. It helps to remind people that drama is alright, but not all the time. In fact, of the television shows I watch with regularity that are still airing new episodes, very few if any are "dramas." Even a show like Anthony Bourdain's has to make allowances for humor, albeit of the sarcastic side that I am almost prenaturally good at and can appreciate.

It's a complicated thing, to be eager to be funny while acknowledging that a certain meanness in you joke might go off wrong.

Anyway, did I tell you the one about Newt Gingrich at a sex club?....

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

I would say some words about the passing of Levon Helm, the drummer and most compelling vocal presence in The Band, but I'm saving those for a review I'm doing of his memoir from 1993, for Paste Magazine.

So there...

Blogger has a new look, apparently (not that I can tell it from looking at my blog, thankfully, but I can tell it now, as I'm trying to write this without cringing at the new layout too much). Change is the only constant, but sometimes websites seem to change just for the hell of it. I'm just saying, do we really need all the fancy bells and whistles?

I expect my account to be deleted without my knowledge in a fortnight...

This week (well, last weekend, as it were) marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Man's Ultimate Gift to Irony, the Titanic. This was an opportunity for James Cameron to re-release his film of the same name in 3-D, a trend that I'm not privy to because of my near-sightedness. Oh sure, you say to me, they make googles now that can accomodate glass-wearers. You might as well tell me to go ahead and get contacts, to be like everyone else. I don't wanna be like everyone else.

Plus, I'm clumsy...who's to say I start putting in a contact and gouge my eyeball out with an overly long fingernail?

Hyperbolic? Yes. Too bizarre to actually occur? I don't want to find out.

Anyway, getting used to this new layout as I type, maybe it's not so bad after all.

How I Met Your Mother...Eventually

I'd like to take a minute to reflect on a television show and what it says about our culture in the way that it reflects it back to us and helps us form a better understanding of why it is that we do what we do when faced with the circumstances that occur in our daily life.

That show, of course, is Hee-Haw.

Actually, the show is How I Met Your Mother, and while it's not consistantly good (the recent storyline involving Barney and a stripper pushes all the wrong buttons for me, it seems like a mistake), it does do something that I think a lot of shows don't even bother to do: tell a story.

Now, as an English major (hell, as someone with a degree in English; I often have to remind myself of that when I'm feeling low. I have a degree, I'll just be damned if I can do anything with it just yet), I am what you might term a fan of narrative, the convention by which a story is an actual story and not just a random series of events strung together for high ratings or to please the insane demands of Charlie Sheen. And a few TV shows seem to fit nicely into the niche of "over-arcing story," though sometimes they become so bogged down in the mythology that they lose focus of the characters in order to advance what the audience knows (or thinks they know) is important. See the last few years of The X-Files (though I did not).

HIMYM from the very beginning satisifies both the demands of a linear story (after all, he's telling it to his kids, though I agree with Peter Griffin that it doesn't make any sense for him to sound like Bob Saget when he gets older) and the occasional foray into side-stories that complement the main narrative while not distracting us from it entirely (unless they do so in a manner that makes us appreciate the main narrative all the more). It's not so much a show about how Ted, the protagonist ("main character," as non-English majors might say), meets the mother as how it is that he didn't meet her sooner. There's an almost Waiting for Godot effect that, if I'd ever read it, would strike me as either an apt metaphor or not (after all, does Godot ever show up? Dunno).

Now, some people have problems with this, suggesting that the delay of meeting the mother (and thus starting the story of how the kids that are listening to the story came to be) is being drawn out. They're right, of course, but the producers of the show know something: this is how the best romantic comedies work.

Think about a typcial romantic comedy: boy and girl meet, then ninety to a hundred minutes later they end up happy together. End credits, wait for the obvious Rod Stewart standards cover, and consider gouging your ears out everytime you think you hear the romantic theme playing in your local Starbucks. But hold on: what occurred during the eighty-plus minutes between meet-cute and making whoopy? Shenanigans, that's what. The journey is often more rewarding than the destination (unless the destination is Katherine Heigl, then it's just torture all around).

What I like about the show is that it acknowledges this, with false leads and false starts because often times, that's what it's like in real life. We know that Ted met the mother, we know he's happy now (unless he isn't...ooh, interesting idea: what if he's telling the story of how he met the mother while he's getting a divorce? Nah, too sad). What matters is what came before, what led to that. Therein lies the drama, however well-done it is (or isn't).

I'm roughly the same age as Ted (the "protagonist," if you'll recall), and I've had my share of near-relationship experiences with various women over the years (a few of them were even aware of this and active participants in the near-relationship, happily enough), so I can relate to him better than I can, say, Don Draper (though I don't have AMC and thus cannot judge for myself whether I'd like Mad Men). HIMYM isn't my favorite show (that nod, right now, is to Community though I still watch The Office out of loyalty and obligation) but it is a show that I like tremendously, because it takes the somewhat stale notion of the meet-cute and extends it past the breaking point, to where you almost don't care how it turns out because you're enjoying the ride.

That was a slightly pretentious sentence, but what do you expect? I have an English degree, people!

Anyway, enough time spent musing in front of the computer screen about a fictional story, now off to the bookstore to buy another fictional story!

Bring the Creative Non-Fiction, Clemson!

The Clemson Literary Festival is currently underway this week, and while I can't knock the line-up for this year too much (Richard Ford is one of those authors I keep meaning to start reading, and my old professor/boss at McSweeneys John Warner is one of the authors at the event), I do have a slightly different list of people I'd like to see at the event (or events, as it's a series of readings and what not spread out over a couple of days). It's my wish-list, if you will, and while allowing for the fact that Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, Updike, and Graham Greene are no longer among us (but what a hell of a panel discussion that would be: "Sin and Man in Twentieth-Century Literature..."), I think I'd stick to something that doesn't get mentioned much when people learn that you're an English major: creative non-fiction.

Barring the kind of creative non-fiction that actually is fiction (James Frey, Jayson Blair, etc.), creative non-fiction to me consists mostly of well-written essays, and essay-writing is an art form that looks deceptively easy but is anything but. For the most part, creative non-fiction has been my most publishable endeavor (i.e., magazines and online sites tend to look for it more than fiction), and I have some definite preferences.

I like the work especially of non-fiction writers (or fiction writers dipping their toes in the non-fiction stream) that challenges accepted notions. I'm something of a pop-culture obssessive (in case you couldn't tell from some of my previous posts), so I love to read either about bands or artists or directors that I already know or love, or discover new paragons of whatever art form I'm reading about who either just started or were unknown to me before I read that essay or collection.

With that in mind, let me offer my dream list: Roy Blount Jr. (Southern writer whose book About Three Bricks Shy of a Load is my favorite football book), Michael Chabon (kinda cheating, because he's primarily a fiction writer, but his collection Manhood for Amateurs is a must-read), A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All), Anthony Bourdain (c'mon, you gotta read Kitchen Confidential), Sarah Vowell, Tom Wolfe (he invented the creative non-fiction genre, more or less), P.J. O'Rourke, David Sedaris, Chuck Klosterman, Greil Marcus (these two are the best rock critics I've ever read), and I'm blanking on who else but I'm guessing that's a pretty solid line-up. So make it happen, Clemson...I dares you!

Unless you can get Thomas Pynchon to come out of hiding, I think my list is hard to top (but that would top it).

Trevor has spoken...

Easter 2: Electric Boogaloo

Easter is around the corner, and that means that my internet access this weekend will be kaput, as I rely on the auspices of the local libraries to allow me access to only the classiest nineteenth-century erotica and, well, they're gonna be closed.

Charlie Brown: "Augh!"

Anyway, I have some good news: I may have a book review published in the next issue of Paste Magazine (next week sometime). I'll know more probably by Monday (such as...well, if it is being published), and will update accordingly.

Until next week, then, be safe out there, San Diego....