My Apologies...

Dear Connor & Jack,

Remember this?

Let me just put it out there now because the tension between the three of us is palpable and I would like to just put it behind us. Yes, I do realize I haven’t written to you in six months. I am sorry. I have no excuses and you’re right to be mad. I’ve been a terrible uncle. And I know a giant box of candy (Connor) and a couple of books with naughty words in them (Jack) don’t make up for my lack of correspondence. And I’m also sorry for bringing those presents up while I apologized. It was self-serving just like the remainder of this letter probably will be, this whole blog probably has been, and my existence as a whole almost certainly is.

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.

Judge these books by their covers.

Then I thought, ‘I can barely remember anything from the past six weeks’. So I’ll do my best to remember stuff, but it’s more likely that you’re going to just get a heavy does from the past eight days or so. Most of these stories are ones that upset me because that’s all I remember.

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.

Community Loses Its Leader

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