Sorry, Carrie, this picture is so legit it warrants overuse.
by Brendan Cavanagh
On those odd weeks where I struggle to come up with a suitable topic to present to the readers of Classic Brian, or when I have myriad topics to choose from, but stress- or college-induced writer's block impedes my ability to articulate exactly what I'm thinking, I have consulted my close friend, Ms. Carrie McMenamin, for aid. Immediately she pummels me with three or four perfectly adequate ideas, but every time I have either failed to come up with a decently-sized post regarding such ideas, disregarded those I found unsuitable or loosely come up with an original idea found by means of subsequent contemplation of her suggestions. However, this week I have had plenty of time to mull over her thoughts and I've come up with enough material to cover some of her more prominent recommendations.
I would like to begin by discussing the maddeningly prevalent issue of small talk. To paraphrase Carrie's father, "Small talk is like currency; the more there is, the less valuable it becomes." In most situations, making blithe conversation without any intention of becoming embroiled in a serious discussion is perfectly acceptable. When you walk down a street downtown and pass a stranger, it is polite to utter a mere "Hello" or "How 'bout this rain?" Likewise, engaging in casual conversation with a colleague in between assigned tasks or shifts at work is quite common. However, in an educational environment in which you have some sort of connection with students you see nearly every day in the hallways, in class or on the campus, small talk is all-too-often used, and used inappropriately at that. Personally, I don't feel if I see a friend more than two or three times a day that I should have to ask, "How are ya?" every time we cross paths, or feel obliged to engage in the "stop-and-chat-" a pointless, minutes-long affair of banal and uninteresting dialogue. Most people feel that when they are in close proximity to a casual acquaintance or class mate, they are forced to ask, "What's uuuuuup?" with no concern for what's really uuuuuup with that person. If they want to have a short discussion about something that involves the both of us, be it in or out of class, it's cool if they stop me and ask for my input. But too often, there's this mutually awkward, unconscious impression that the two of us need to outrageously acknowledge each other's presence. A simple nod or wave, high five or fist pound is appropriate. Here's the irony: I, too, am guilty of making inane small talk with people I know even the slightest because I am awkward and/or forget my principles when thrust into such a situation.
They will. They really will. No offense. These kids are NOT alright. They are pretty damn twisted, really.
A friend of mine introduced me to Tyler the Creator a few weeks back.
Tyler and his crew Odd Future, who fancy the abbreviation OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All – I know, right?), have proceeded to violently explode in popularity the last three weeks. Not saying I was the good luck charm or anything, but the group caught my eye the moment before they exploded, which is pretty cool. If you watch that video, you're in for a treat.
Tyler, or Wolf Haley (hence the term Wolf Gang) is a madman. He seems like a mastermind but at the same time there's undeniable proof that he's really dumb. Not in like a Kanye West way where he says the wrong thing at the wrong time, but in like a he doesn't know better way where he says the wrong thing all the time.
His Twitter name is @fucktyler. He capitalizes each word in his tweets for some reason (save for a missed one here or there) and tweets all the time. He uses the word fuck as if it's giving him an endorsement. He has been tweeting all week about how fucking cool his life is, now that he's getting popular. He has been on MTV and has gotten approving tweets from Diddy and Kanye West, and has been vehemently enthralled about every second of it. He's like a kid. And he is a kid, at just 19 years old.
His crew consists of himself, 16 year old Earl Sweatshirt, Hodgy Beats, Left Brain, Syd Tha Kyd (a female!), Frank Ocean, Domo Genesis, The Super 3, Jasper, Taco, and Mike G. I've never heard of half those guys. Whatever. They sound pretty cool.
This is a video of a cricket committing suicide because a parasitic worm in its body told it to. This video is disgusting. This video is not for the faint of heart.
For all of nature's beauty and stuff, it is a scary place. Imagine that you're a cricket; you don't know why this worm larger than yourself is living inside of your body. You don't know how it got there. You just know that something hurts and that you don't feel right.
Even scarier is that this worm somehow forces the cricket to jump into water and drown itself. That is scary shit. It takes advantage of the cricket's natural instincts and inhibitions, and perverts them to its own devices. It's like having an itch that you need to scratch, until you die.
And it gets scarier than that. Next is a video of a caterpillar.
Spoiler: He gets eaten from the inside out, and his brain gets taken over to make him protect the parasites.
I watched my cousin Toby change a tire on his car and I remembered that I am not a man. I don't think I'd ever seen a star wrench before, and the extent of my knowledge of brake pads comes mostly from Tommy Boy.
"Here, take this and check the tire pressure on that wheel over there," my uncle Marty said as he handed me the nozzle of an air compressor.
"Okay LOL," I replied with the grandest of false confidences, and I walked the plank over to the right front tire. What the hell does this thing do? This looks unscrewable. *Unscrews.* I bet I can jam this in here. *Giggles.* Uh... Shit. Okay, this looks like it's working. Actually, I have no idea if this is working. Keep looking diligent. No, don't look up, he'll see the green fear in your eyes. What do I do? Maybe I can stay here forever and have Copper bring me dead rabbits every day to eat. I don't think it would be that bad. I don't think rabbit meat is that tough. It certainly beats looking foolish at car stuff. Oh sweet God thank you, Marty's leaving the garage to get something. "Toby..."
This past Friday I cashed in my extra meal points for this week's cereal at the local campus market. My shopping rendezvous complete, I carried home a plastic shopping bag full of light-to-semi-heavy items. My friend Garrett remembered a time recently when I ran into him, arms full of shopping bags, breaking both bags wide open.
"I bet you won't hit me with that bag," he said with a distinctly Conor-esque inflection.
I just got back from a date party where I danced. Yeah that happened. I was about to lay and bed and play maybe an hour of Final Fantasy before I went to bed, but if I have time to play Final Fantasy I have time to write a half-assed Classic Brian. Never again will I fail my readers.
So here are the things that have interested me lately.
Radiohead - Lotus Flower
Radiohead came out with a really good album last Friday called the King Of Limbs. It's the first time in a while that they've released a really good album instead of an arguably amazing album, so some people, myself included, were initially somewhat disappointed by it. But even weak Radiohead interests me and challenges me. There are things to love about this album. It's subtle and contained, maybe even to a fault. The huge musical moments they're known for (like the climax of Exit Music or the explosion halfway through 2+2=5) are no where to be found, but it's obviously a decision they made. They can make that music, and they chose not to. The question is why did they do that, and without that sense of drama and scale does the music still connect? I can't tell you why they designed the album like that, but the music definitely still works. It makes you have to search for the little things. The melodies that don't initially jump out at you, the guitar lines that come in so quietly you didn't even realize they were there, the lyrics that were obscured by the way Thom Yorke sings, etc. There's good stuff there to be found. It's not as good, but I still love it.
Also check this guy out. He's a dancing machine.
Bright Eyes - Shell Games
This is just a perfect song. Everything works. I've always been a fan of Bright Eyes, but I've never been 100% sold. I know how Bright Eyes operate, so I can't fool myself into thinking the rest of this album will be as catchy or as infectious, but I can hope.
Fisherman's Horizon - Final Fantasy VIII
I'm learning this on the piano right now. Their arrangements are so pretty. I especially the part that begins at 2:25, the way the different hands and voices harmonize.
Thomas Jefferson - Derrick Comedy
My guy Tynan showed this to me over the summer, and so you know, I didn't even find this video for the first time recently, but for some reason there was a time first semester where I watched this like twice a day. Iunno why. Maybe to try to get funnier. * Also Mada showed Derrick Comedy to me in the first place, so shout out to Tuesday.
The Mountain Goats - God Damn These Vampires
I feel somewhat obligated to like this song because it's called "God Damn These Vampires." ** Thank god it's good. John Darnielle writes the best choruses. That's not dissing his verses at all, his melodies and especially his lyrics are definitely incredible. It's just he's written so many choruses that just make me nod in agreement. They just click so well. It's not like I relate to all of his characters, or the sadness and wild, energetic desperation that make up so much of his work. It's not me personally being like "yeah, I get you." It's just the combinations of his words and his conviction. Together they're perfect. Like "I am going to make it through this year if it kills me," or "... and I won't get better but one day I'll be free, cause I am not this body that imprisons me." "And in a small room in Brazil, we were waiting" doesn't seem like an amazing line by itself, but with John Darnielle's voice, it is.
And any chorus that has the line "God damn these vampires for what they've done to me" is just sweet as hell, I don't care.
OKAY WELL I GUESS THAT'S IT. Status report from Conor. I saw Broken Social Scene last Sunday in Tulsa on a whim. That was sweet. I almost died in a car crash on the way up there. That was also sweet, no joke. I'm well on my way to locating the house I will be living in next year, which is exciting. It's not lost or hard to find it's just, you know, we don't know what we're doing exactly yet. But we will soon. I'm trying to figure out what my spring break is looking like. There's a frisbee tournament the first weekend of spring break that our B Team ("Of which I am proudly member of," Conor said while gazing longingly at the A Team) is supposed to be playing in, but I bet we won't get enough people to go and we'll have to cancel, so like, no way am I going to buy plane tickets to work around that tournament that I am pretty much certain we will drop out off. Frustration becomes me. Tomorrow is our frisbee team's Prom party. I got asked out. By Nolan. A dude. So. I'm going with Nolan. A dude. He best put out.
YEAH I GUESS THAT'S ALL.
*Impossible
**And because it's by the Mountain Goats, if I'm really being honest with myself.
In the above picture you will see, from left to right, the author, his friend David Garvey and their television alter-egos, Roger Sterling and Don Draper. The latter two men are the stars of the hit AMC series Mad Men, which centers around the personal and professional lives of a group of men and women who work for an advertising agency in New York City in the early 1960s. In some ways, our identification with the two men is somewhat superficial, as we like to think of ourselves as two dapper, suave young gentlemen with opalescent prospects. However, certain personality traits in the two characters have found themselves exemplified in David and I.
For instance, apart from bearing a resemblance to the man, David relates to Don Draper, the handsome, brilliant, albeit entirely enigmatic Creative Director in a more romantic, social sense. An adequate guide for attracting women in which David takes stock has most fortunately been provided by Don Draper himself! There are four main steps:
One. "When in doubt, remain absolutely silent."
David, you see, attends Lincoln Land Community College, which serves as his primary arena for attracting women (though I imagine he may see some results one of the next times he does his "Brad Pitt Workout" in the basement of the YMCA). He talks to girls, but has found that in the field of talking to girls, talking to girls is not always his strong suit. However, once he embraced his identity as Don Draper, he began to stop talking so eagerly and incessantly, favoring instead to remain in silence throughout class and prospering heavily at its result. He said to me earlier tonight in regard to this step, "You know how many girls at LLCC approached me? Let me think. At least 6."
Two. "When asked about your past, give vague, open-ended answers."
David does not like to discuss his one serious, high school relationship of several years. It is a dead subject that paints a picture of an entirely different person, and he is happy with his distinct personality he possess today. However, not everyone else is so willing to forget. When asked about his relationship, David will respond with such replies as, "I don't know, I don't remember, I can't talk about it, If only you knew, If I could tell you or It's a long story." An almost guaranteed moratorium on past relationship talk.
Three. "Have a great name."
Come on. Don't tell me that you didn't notice the rich alliteration and pleasing flow of the name "David Garvey." All those hard sounds counterbalanced by the smooth double "v"s. Okay, maybe it's not exactly "Don Draper," but at least he doesn't have to spell and/or pronounce his name emphatically a million times everytime someone asks for it. NO, there is no "u" in my last name, and for some reason, whenever I spell my name, no one seems to be able to distinguish between the letter "v" and the letter "b." How many Brendan Cabanaughs do you know?
Four. "Look fantastic in a suit. Look fantastic in casual wear. Look fantastic in anything. Sound good. Smell good. Kiss good. Strut around with supreme confidence. Be uncannily successful at your job. Blow people away everytime you say anything. Take six-hour lunches. Disappear for weeks at a time. Lie to everyone about everything. And drink and smoke constantly. Basically, be Don Draper."
Okay, well maybe David doesn't encapsulate each and every one of Don Draper's characteristics, but he DOES wear Ray Ban sunglasses, as does Mr. Draper himself. Admittedly, simply wearing a pair of Ray Bans makes both of them much sexier. But also, David has a very smooth way of interacting with men and women alike, so that while he may not be tearing off girls' clothes left and right, he still emits a sense of debonair self-assuredness that is not mistaken for cockiness in the slightest. He has a very fluid way of conversing with you, and you should see this guy sip on an Orange Fanta. I could have sworn he was enjoying a little mid-morning scotch-whiskey in the office.
So where do I figure in? How do I embody Roger Sterling's traits? Who is Roger Sterling, you might ask? Roger is Don Draper's immediate boss and trusted friend at the advertising agency, and he lives every day like he is "on shore leave." Yes, that's right, he smokes and drinks perpetually- in and out of the office- and prefers to fool around with women much younger than himself and much more beautiful than his wife. All of this ultimately led to two heart attacks in the same year. He is kind of a douche bag.
I don't really remember why David and I decided that I was Roger Sterling, but I suppose if he wanted to be Don Draper, he needed a sidekick, and in a way, Sterling and I both fit that mold. I guess David and I sort of exemplify the dynamic that makes Draper and Sterling so admirable and affable. We enter a room together will much more self-confidence and higher aspirations when we're together, which sadly is all too rare these days. I like to imagine us in about fifteen or twenty years, positioned around a dining table at David's house. My eyes frequently meet with his beautiful and charming wife's as I oh-so-subtly make passes at her, and I'm considering calling my secretary up for a little late-night horsing around once dessert is over,
This is my secretary. I'd be stupid not to do it, right...?
while all the while my wife is obliviously telling David about how our daughter has the lead role in her school play. Yeah, that's the life. And David and I are not mad about our prospects at all.
