The New Boredom

I’d like to start up a new column here at The New Boredom reserved for apologies called, quite uncreatively, I’m Sorry For: in which I’d like to get some figurative, and sometimes frighteningly literal, monkeys off my back. It can certainly be a cathartic release to admit one’s ample flaws, and as part of my ongoing struggle to be a better (or at least less awful) person, I’d like to use this public space to come clean with you readers and indeed, the world.

Today’s apology: I’m sorry that I don’t have a TV. More specifically, I’m sorry that in the past I have boasted or touted my lack of television ownership among friends, family, and worst of all- on social network profiles. A tawdry attempt to make myself seem somehow more cultured or sophisticated, the claim is roughly equivalent to carrying a bubble pipe:

no. not me.

I used to try justifying my supposedly unique and falsely righteous position by telling people, with my nose high in the air, that I “simply didn’t have time for TV,” which has always been a big load of shit. I have plenty of time to sit around a spend hours of time wandering the back alleys of the internet or skimming through unread magazines, surely resulting in a net loss of productivity. I’ve taken countless naps on perfectly nice days. I became a professional trials rider. Yes, I had time indeed.

Somehow the hipster pecker-faced mentality that TV was the source of all our modern evils was a kool-aid that I drank, even though the thought alone of drinking kool-aid makes me want to puke in my lap. Cursing the medium for the content is an offense that no person even remotely influenced by common sense should ever be guilty of.

My parents’ generation was raised on television as well but mostly on less than a half dozen channels. My entire generation was raised on an angry Bruce Banner of TV with dozens, sometimes hundreds of channels pumping out content at our young faces. Like it or not, TV is an integral part of my generation’s identity. A hipster becomes an asshole by choice and even the biggest and most defiant asshole still knows references to television like: Patty Mayonnaise, Mulder and Scully, and Kurt Loader.

While television may be the means of delivery for a staggering amount of trashy and mind numbing programing, it doesn’t make the little box, or now, the thin thingy hanging on the wall, in and of itself- evil. I’ve spent my lifetime sifting through the dirt and have found many jewels that serve as anchors in my memory timeline. I recall music videos all the time that are indicative of my youth (back when MTV still played videos, children born after 1998 won’t know of this fabled time). The Smashing Pumpkins‘ parody of George Mellies’ Voyage to the Moon and that kid spinning down the hill inside of a giant tire. That doll on the grill in Black Hole Sun. All the people coming out of the trunk of Coolio’s car. The little penny hardaway puppets in No Diggity. The high school society rules and soapy dude asses in Popular. This list could go on for hours and have all been absorbed as little facets of my own identity.

Few things have served to bridge generations like tv and thanks to entire networks devoted to re-runs, I am familiar with such cultural icons as Vinny Barbarino and Horseshack, the Fonz, Walter Cronkite, Rudy Huxtable, and Adam West. I can share a Welcome Back, Kotter joke with someone from an older generation the same way that I can share an opinion on a Shakespeare play.

Thank the all powerful Atheismo that a good deal of tv has found its way to the internet. For one, linking drives up traffic to this stupid blog, and for another- I no longer have to own a tv to enjoy tv. I can watch a good deal of really great tv content on my computer now. There’s no excuse to act all high and mighty about not owning a tv now that you can see 30 Rock and Arrested Development online.

I’m sorry that I have blown my own pretentious horn in the past regarding TV. I hope that TV and you all will forgive me.

Watch this. It takes 8 minutes. I know you have 8 minutes in your day to spare. Sit down, turn off your music and your phone ringer, stop thinking about your homework, or your job, or the pile of bills stacking up. Just breath in and out, relax, and watch. Don’t skip ahead at any point and don’t adjust your volume.

Get it?

I went to school and got an Arts & Crafts degree where I had to watch some of this guy’s stuff before. Nam June Paik was this Korean artist that was basically the grandfather of video art and is kind of credited for inventing the term “information super-highway” so he probably got it when he made that film. I might claim to “get it” but that seems pretty pompous of me. I just know that you should take at least 8 minutes out of your busy day and sit… free from the hustle and bustle of your work-a-day life of McSaladShakers and High Efficiency laundry detergents to just reflect on life and what it means to you.

You should take the time to be aware of the very real world around you beyond the simulated one on the flickering screen you so often glue yourself to. Listen to the sounds that you have learned to tune out- the hum of the fridge, the fan in your computer, the passing traffic on the street outside, the birds, the voices of roommates or neighbors beyond the door, your heart beating, your hair growing- and just acknowledge the world. We’re all so trained to bask in the barrage of flashy images and bright, candy colored ads that come in from all directions that it’s genuinely uncomfortable for most of us to watch nothing. Does it seem backwards to anyone else?

If this seems similar to John Cage’s 4′33, that’s because it is. They were both tapped into the same vein of media theory. If you apply Cage’s theory to Paik’s film, you’ll end up watching a different film every time you see it. In the original film projection, you would see different scratches and dust and little hairs on the film as it endlessly loops on itself. Carrying over with this video version, you’ll hear a different sound track with each viewing, and fill in the space with different mental imagery depending on your mood that day or whatever is troubling or pleasing you. The blank slate is anything but…

All you cheaters who skipped ahead on the video timeline should go back and re-watch it now. And this time really watch it, really experience it.

Is it bad that I went a good 30 seconds before I realized that the faces were composited in? Sort of a weird Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker (first part is hilarious, it gets better… trust me) type thing only done somehow more disturbingly employing found footage from the Golden Girls.

I saw these videos a few days ago but wanted to go back to revisit them in an effort to better grasp it all. I ended up with a really bad headache that feels like a cross between brain freeze and walking into a cabinet door. It’s right behind and above my eyeballs in my brain. I may have to watch some videos of people getting absolutely destroyed by excersize balls to make it go away. That is physics too I figure…

I got these polarized sunglasses a while ago and walking around lately with snow and melty stuff on the ground, I look around and feel like I have some sort of hyper-dimensional vision with these things on. I dont know why but it feels like I have this crazy more-than-3d-vision. I’ve never understood how to visualize higher dimensions and while this video has left me with more questions than answers, it is the best explanation of why we stopped at a certain number of dimensions. I always wanted to know why we couldnt just keep going with the math and have 14 or 28 dimensions… turns out you can’t have more than every possibility in every universe in ever dimension. Simple! Eleven dimensions seems comfy enough.

And then just for scale, this made me feel pretty weird. The music certainly helps in making me think that I should just quit. Quit everything and go live in a shack in the woods until I die. I guess I should get some editing work done though.

And then to make me feel a little less glass-half-empty with my insignificance I watched this in order to feel like at least the dwarfing scale of it all can be really beautiful.

Yup. Next time you go and think your penis is pretty big, just remember- it ain’t shit.

I just remember that Vermont was a long drive away. On the way there we stopped by the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory for a tour but when we got there, the power was out for the whole town due to some freakishly heavy rain so we got the tour by flashlight sort of and had to eat a ton of ice cream because they said it was melting and going bad. Then Steve drove Matt’s van into a big rock in front of a gas station and smashed the piss out of the license plate.

The track at Vermont was ridiculous. I was scared out of my mind watching people going that fast over ground that rough filled with man sized holes and lined with school bus sized slabs of bone crushing rocks. There was one section in particular that just looked sped up. Everyone was hitting it so god damn fast and there was a huge water bar at the bottom that was anahilating people’s shocks. I can’t remember if that’s the spot but I thik Chris Boyce may have blown up his spleen in that section.

Snowmass was just another race at Snowmass. The course was good and relatively unchanged from previous years. It rained the hardest I’ve ever seen in Colorado for about 30 minutes the night before finals. Damian Breach was there and had rented a gigantic 400mm lens to shoot the race with but I think there was only like 3 places on the track that he could even use the thing.

Sorry, I’m pretty much fresh out of witty anecdotes and memories for now. It’s still 5 degrees outside in Boulder and not much better in my apartment. Brain no likey cold.

No man is an island. Or if you are, at least you’re one in an island chain or archipelago of similar islands. At certain times (during figuratively low sea levels in particular), you really can connect via the fabled human-isthmus. These isthmuses (isthmii?) are rare indeed. Cherish the moment you find one.

I found one last night in the form of this bit by long revered comedian Louis C.K. who has provided the world with ample hilarious interviews, performances, and graced us all with the glory of the Pottie Tang movie. In this bit, he talks about how he tried to connect with another human through a familiar t-shirt and how he recreationaly hates the shit out of other people just for kicks. I felt as though he were reaching through time and space itself to pluck the feeling of this material from my very brain. Thank the gods that I am not alone.I’m not the only person who wishes another ill because of their stupid god damn shoes they have on…

And in other news, this should blow your mind right out of it’s mind-water- it’s a 1,474 megapixel image stitched together from a ton of photos grabbed from David Bergman on a plain Jane Canon G-10. The photo is kind of big, something like a few gigs. You can read about it here and spend the next couple hours cruising around through the various smiling faces contained within the image, bursting with happiness that some semblance of reality has shown up to take the reigns, and other shivering faces cursing the late arrival of global warming.

And if that doesn’t blow your mind then it’s probably because it’s already blown. Take for example Steven Hamilton. Further evidence that the guy is absolutely bat-shit crazy… and that I’m forever jealous:

It snowed in Boulder and right now it’s 5 degrees outside. This kind of crap makes me really appreciate the sweet memories of Mexico- buying a bag of chips and a cold beverly at the corner market and sitting on the beach listening to the waves roll in while gorging myself on the entire bag of delicious totopos over the course of the afternoon.

I promise to have more interesting, original content when my brain thaws out from the cold.