Dear Connor & Jack,
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| Remember this? |
You have a selfish Uncle, but in time I hope you will forgive me for this and we can continue to be friends. In the meantime I thought I’d catch you up on the last six months of popular culture with, as always, my very skewed and egocentric point of view.
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| Judge these books by their covers. |
Anyway, let’s try to recap:
Hamels Pays
For Being Honest
As you get older you will find honesty to be a more and more
complicated concept. You can’t always be honest and some times it’s just better
to keep your mouth shut. Honesty is often most difficult when it’s needed the
most, which is totally lame of honesty to be like that. In this case, Hamels
admitting he threw at Nationals 19-year-old rookie Bryce Harper on purpose to
“welcome him to the big leagues”, he probably should have kept that to himself.
It’s kind of one of those unspoken parts of the game and Hamels was punished
for speaking about it. He only missed one start and now the Phillies-Nationals
rivalry is a little more interesting, Hamels is a little more of a villain in
the eyes of baseball fans—which I think he wanted, and the rookie learns a lesson.
What is that lesson? I don’t know, duck, I guess. As for Major League Baseball,
well, let’s just say they aren’t huge fans of honesty. Especially when one of
their giant headed players is smashing 500 ft. home runs. But I’m not here to
talk about the past. (Though that’s literally all I’m doing)
We Lose a Beastie
I don’t know what kind of music you boys will be into. For
the next 12-15 years it’s most likely going to be horrible, whatever it is.
Then one magical day you will find an artist, a band, a group, and it will be
like you’re hearing music for the first time. And in many ways you are. And
that music will open you up to more music and that’s how your music taste will
grow. And since you’ve decided to be a couple of white boys from the suburbs of
Philly there’s a good chance you will be into hip-hop. I mean you have to rebel
against your Dad’s love of Pantera, right? Well, if you do get into hip-hop,
The Beastie Boys’ “License to Ill” is a great place to start. The Beastie Boys
won’t steer you wrong. And MCA has more rhymes than Abe Vigoda. I know, I know,
you didn’t think anyone had more rhymes than Abe Vigoda, well someone did, and
he was awesome. RIP MCA.
Last Friday Dan Harmon, the creator and driving creative
force behind the TV show Community,
was unceremoniously fired.
As you guys know, I love TV. More than just love, I respect TV. And there
are more reasons to love TV now, in 2012, than any point in history. There are
also more reasons to hate TV than in anytime in history—so many reasons to hate
TV. There are some of the most detestable people in society on TV; in fact,
being detestable is what makes them so appealing. I guess, I don’t know, I
can’t watch that stuff. I meet enough horrible people in real life; I don’t
need to watch them on television. I watch TV because I enjoy watching talented
people do what they do best. It brings me joy.
At first Community was just a funny show about
seven students at a community college, one of which had an almost encyclopedic
knowledge of TV and movies and quite possibly suffered from some form of
Asperger’s. I related to this character for obvious reasons. Also, the show
made me laugh, so I continued to watch.
Then their Goodfellas
show where Abed became the Godfather of cafeteria chicken fingers happened and I
thought maybe the is more to this show than just another sitcom.
Then the paintball episode “Modern Warfare” and the and the
clip show that wasn’t a clip show and the bottle episode that was a bottle
episode and the insanely weird “My Dinner with Andre” episode and the
masterpiece that was “Remedial Chaos Theory” where they explored seven
different timelines in just 22 minutes and well…you get the idea. Community
challenged with the idea of what a situational comedy could be. I admired it
for this.
And even though they were renewed for 13 more episodes,
without Harmon the show probably won’t be the ambitious, mind-bendingly weird
show I’ve grown to love.
And my problem isn’t that Harmon was fired from his own
creation*, that’s the business of TV. If you want to create a TV show, you have
to sell it to someone who has no interest in the show’s artistic merit. It’s
show business, boys, not show me something I’ve never seen before that’s
creatively challenging to me.
(*Though I can’t imagine how hard it must be for him to walk
away from what will probably be his career defining work. Something he put so
much of himself in and obviously cared enough about not to let anyone convince
him to change it. Now he has to watch a bastardized version of it exist for 13
more episodes. I can’t imagine he’ll be able to watch it. That’s got to be
tough.)
My real problem is that Harmon never would have been fired
if people watched the show. But no one did. It got terrible ratings. And the
weirder and more ambitious it got the less people watched.
This was a show for people who don’t just love TV, but
respect it. And Community’s ratings
and Harmon’s firing only proved what I already knew…people are the worst.
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All three of those stories happened in the last three weeks.
If I try to go back any further we’d be here all day, and I know you boys have
a long drive ahead of you. I don’t know
what the overall lesson is with these three stories. I guess the lesson is don’t
let “The Man” keep you down, people are the worst, and The Beastie Boys are
dope.
(I’m rusty. Gimme a break.)
I have to finish packing and hop on this plane.
See you tomorrow.
Your Favorite Uncle,
Kevin
