Someday in my future--could be fifteen, thirty, even fifty years from now--I imagine I will reflect back on this time in my life and think, "Why didn't I study just a little bit harder for my MCATs? I could have been a doctor. I could have done something with meaning. What was I even doing with my time back then?"
And then I will remember the three minutes and thirty-seven seconds I spent on this video and be content that I made the right decision. Probably.
I don't know, I think they're onto something! Do you remember the last time you loved the cast of SNL completely, felt like every joke came off exactly as it was supposed to, and never missed an episode? For me it was probably about 14, when staying up until 1:00 am felt like a minor rebellion and my sense of humour was still in development.
Courting the adolescents is smart. If the producers are lucky, those kids will grow up with just as much misplaced nostalgia for the show as we had and it'll be around for another 36 seasons. And a new generation will be watching and cringing and wondering who that 15-year-old with the funny hair is and why he's up past his bedtime.
Nobody is attacking you personally or calling you stupid. This is a contentious issue and you're welcome to your point of view. But it's possible there are aspects to the debate that you haven't considered, and it looks to me like we were just pointing those out.
You're right, though. It's a Friday night and I'm at home on the internet, checking in on this thread. I have a lot of work to do tonight and occasionally it's nice to take five minutes away from the things I should be doing to chill out and watch some gifs. Maybe I should be doing more of the chilling out, though, and less of the engaging in debate stuff (I just happen to kind of enjoy arguing about these things, that's all). Also, for the record, I would have no problem saying any of these things to your face. One, because I have no filter and two, because I volunteer with a sexual education group and basically one of my jobs is to say these things to peoples' faces all day.
One personal anecdote of two people behaving irresponsibly does not make a trend. When we start legislating based on anecdotal evidence, we screw a lot of people. Every system that involves taxpayer money will eventually be abused by somebody, but that's no reason to stop funding those programs.
Ah, me too for Touch of Evil! That crazy, crazy long shot at the beginning makes me want to barf, it's so amazing.
Because this question is impossible and also constantly being asked at social gatherings (and I just go to so many social gatherings! GENTLEMEN), I long ago decided to stop thinking about it and just chose three films that probably represented some of my happiest cinema-going memories:
Touch of Evil
City Lights
Duck Soup
OMG, they all just instantly climb in the bowls! While the cutest cover of a Beatles song I've ever heard plays! Where does this show get its ideas? Seriously, because cute.
Tonight was going to be a super boring night of designing a presentation on powerpoint and then rehearsing it in the mirror 400 times, but I just remembered that I have a bottle of wine in my fridge. Time for some drunk powerpointing! TGIF, you guys!
I don't think she was supposed to be a parody of anyone in particular. Seemed like the joke of the episode was supposed to be on Liz, in that she's just as concerned with trying to control the way women represent themselves as the rest of society. But she manages not to see it since she assumes that her demands regarding female behaviour are in their best interest. The funny is supposed to come from the inversion of that "best interest" when we realize that she's actually going to get this woman killed and that women are individuals who should get to decide what for themselves what their best interests are.
Yes, I took some women's study classes in college. Why do you ask? Shut up now? Sure, I can do that!
No kidding. This is a guy who the UN representative on torture suggested should be tried for war crimes. Whether or not you agree, seems like pretty bad interviewing practice to spend half your conversation with the guy fellating him for being a "true patriot."
But weren't we only using "fake" ironically anyway? Ah, I'm having Alanis Morisette levels of irony confusion, here!
This is why I should get school credit for the amount I use the internet. Sometimes the internet is hard!
At ten, I wore my favourite pair of purple jellies while swimming in the lake (shoes are so necessary for lake swimming. Don't you just hate that really squishy sand?). One of them fell off and was forever lost at the bottom of the lake. I was heartbroken. I guess what I'm saying is that a jelly tribute video would have really spoken to ten-year-old me.
I could probably set up something similar with my local burrito place, though I usually do pickup. Maybe I should give them my address, so they know where to send the ambulance?
I actually just feel kind of bad for him. If at 15-years-old (or whatever baby age he is) someone had stuck a microphone in my face and asked for my political opinion and then published the crap out of it so that my ill-formed thoughts were now etched into i-eternity using indelible e-ink... My face would now be stuck in a permanent cringe. Wait until he has his first pregnancy scare, then ask him.
As the person who usually gets roped into creating the advertisement materials for clinical trials in our office, I will let you in on the secret of why they are always giant pieces of crap: it is because I make about $3000 a year. I am terrible, but highly affordable.
It's all candy for breakfast and midnight bedtimes! Gabe's going to be so mad when he gets back and we're all hopped up on Buffy open threads and serial killer documentaries.
Thanks for sharing! That video really helps me to articulate some stuff I've been picking up on while rewatching the series. Joss Whedon really isn't very good at race. The whole Robin Wood storyline gets especially cringe-worthy.
I do have to give Joss some serious credit on the queer front though, even beyond the Willow storylines. I love that episode where Buffy "comes out" as a slayer to her mother and her mom is like, "But have you tried not being the slayer?" And Buffy's all "Don't be dumb, this is just who I am, deal with it mom." So good!
I don't think anyone is shattered. And I think the people who found it objectionable made a pretty good/civil case for why they did. If introspection is required here, maybe it's required by the people who keep insisting: "It's the internet, chill out!" without acknowledging that attitudes propagated on the internet might actually reflect/affect the attitudes of people in real life.
Seconded! You're the best. Please enjoy this tiny baby polar bear, from me to you:
http://wtfhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/tiny-baby-polar-bear.jpg
This is true. And it's also gross and skeevy when it happens to dudes. The one thing I'll quibble on is that often the photos of women come from a place that is highly aggressive. The possibility of an upskirt encounter becoming violent (or coming from a place of sexual violence) is much higher. At least, this is why my own experience with it was so disturbing. It's hard to know how to react, because it's really not worth getting into a physical fight with a guy who might want to do me real harm.
Someone above mentioned that really aren't such a big deal because body parts are body parts and it's just our culture that tells us to feel humiliated by these experiences. This is completely true and I am the very opposite of a prude when it comes to revealing or low-cut clothing. The problem is not the body parts that are being seen, but the intentions of the people seeing them. The sense of titillation that comes from an upskirt photo (versus a picture of a woman in a bathing suit) is the lack of consent. And that's all sorts of tied up with the fact that the people being photographed are women.
Heh, don't fear the downvotes. I'm getting a bit of hate for saying what amounts to: "I feel empathy for another human and experienced trauma from an assault," so I think people are just feeling a bit testy today. Nap time!
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