Anybody who complains about how they hate stupid people or that the world would be better without stupid people or that stupid people shouldn’t allowed to breed is a useless asshole. People who have slightly above average intelligence are the real worst people in the world. Anybody who not only thinks they’re really smart, but makes it a core, central part of their existence. Entitled, whiny, and with an inexplicably inflated sense of self worth. Basically anybody who’s smart enough to tell that Transformers is a shitty movie series, but not smart enough to contribute anything to humanity that matters. So, the internet, basically.
I’ve never heard an actual intelligent person complain about “stupid people.” Just a bunch of Huffington Post commenters or Reddit users engaged in a circle jerk while they repeat things more intelligent people have said already like its their own opinion. What do most smart people do other than work as a cog in a corporation to make it easier for them to exploit more people and make more money? I don’t think working in a Fortune 500 company’s IT department gives you right to look down on anybody, other than yourself for leading a useless life in service to others more powerful than you.
I would much rather interact with somebody these people consider stupid than one of them. What’s there to gain from that other than listen to somebody be self-involved and depressed all day? Whenever I meet somebody who considers it very important to themselves how smart they are, I can only think that they would have been a Lieutenant in the SS back in Nazi Germany. That’s basically your intelligence level: you’re the guy who figured out how to fit a couple more people in a train car.
A very freeing moment in my life was realizing that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. It allowed me to focus on other things. Like insulting people over the internet.
When I want to mindlessly unwind, I like to play video games. My girlfriend watches reality television shows. The only difference here is that she doesn’t scream at my Nintendo that it’s impossible for a man in Mario’s obviously negligible physical condition to jump so high. But something gets inside of me that whenever a reality show is on television, I can’t help but yell at the screen. This must be the same sensation that comedy club audiences have when I start talking about Star Wars.
I know it’s not appropriate during The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to say, “Oh, shut up. Nobody cares about your stupid garden party, you dried up old useless tart.” Even if she is a dried up old useless tart, which she is. For one, it’s rude to my girlfriend who is largely silent during my video game killing sprees. And also, the old used-to-be-sort-of-hot lady on the television can’t hear me. And if she could, she would have to wait for the story producers to feed her some lines before she could respond. It’s like getting mad at Santa Claus.
It’s one thing to watch reality shows for some turn-of-your brain enjoyment, it’s another thing to watch them and have your entire body filled with incomprehensible rage. Especially since actual bad things happen in the world all the time that I just scroll past on Huffington Post to get to the “10 Celebrity Bikini Bodies You Won’t Believe” article.
Enjoying celebrity gossip and trashy TV is fine. Getting mad about it makes you a fucking moron who should be sterilized for the good of humanity.
The rumors of a Game of Thrones prequel series have been filling me with a sense of dread. Because it’ll be something else I’ll be obligated to watch that I know won’t be very good but I’ll have to watch anyway because my life is mostly empty and unfulfilling. I’m getting really sick of prequels. The first Star Wars prequels should have acted like a leper colony, a warning to others not to go down this road. But the idea is just too tempting. “How can we make more money off this thing that makes us money but also take no chances with it?” Because you have the installed brand recognition, but by definition, you can only do less with it so it doesn’t override or interfere with the original
A lot of people don’t like prequels because they don’t like that they know how everything is going to end up because we’ve already seen what comes next. I think that is only part of the problem. A prequel is limited creatively by what’s already established. For example, there is a Sex in the City prequel series on right now. But in the original Sex in the City we have four self-absorbed older ladies who by anyone’s reasonable standards, should be put to death. So the only thing the prequel series can do is show how these women take twenty years to go from promising young women to open sores on our society. So not only do we as an audience know what is going to happen, but since our characters aren’t fully formed yet, they’re going to be less interesting version of the people we know. We sort of want them to die instead of being filled with an unyielding yearning for their timely ends.
A sequel (a good one) will take the story where the original left off and heighten it, take it to new places. The possibilities are infinite because there’s no future story it must adhere to to reign in it. With a prequel, you’re getting a story not interesting enough to be told the first time. There’s a reason why the exact moment of the original story was chosen to be the beginning. Because you didn’t need to see all the stuff that came before it to understand. All that stuff wasn’t important or compelling enough to be the place where the story started. There have been some good prequels, such as X-Men: First Class or half of Godfather, pt. II. But most of the time, you’re just getting a cash grab that was originally deemed to not be enough of anything to be a story.
I would take the money you were going to spend on a Game of Thrones prequel show and spend it on a device that dangles steaks in front of George R.R. Martin so he completes the books before he dies.
I really love the show Mad Men, just like every other twenty-something female on Pinterest. One of my favorite things about Mad Men is what a stupid idiot dum dum that Don Draper is. Yes, I’m sorry that you’re so unhappy, impossibly handsome rich white man in the 1960′s who can fuck any woman he wants. What a relatable character. Wow, he’s so profound and mysterious, too. Either that or there’s still a piece of shrapnel from the Korean War that’s blocking access to several of his higher brain functions.
I can’t wait till he kills himself in a hilariously appropriate fashion. Because I don’t think I could buy a happy ending for this character at this point. It’s like over the past six seasons, the show has paraded every conceivable thing that could make any reasonable person happy with their lives in front of this goon. And still, we’re forced to watch him gaze longingly into the middle distance, presumably wondering if there’s more than life to this. Yeah, there is. Go spend time with your kids, you dummy. Your prostitute mother probably gave you syphilis and made you this way.
On top of all of this, people call him a genius. A genius. I love how profound and deep and meaningful this character gets about writing advertising. These are the people who changed the lyrics to “Gangnam Style” so they applied to pistachios. Have you ever seen a commercial from the nineteen sixties? Every single one of his pitches should be like: “Okay, so a cartoon fish is gonna sing what your product does.” “Brilliant! Sold!” Maybe Don Draper would be happier if he were talented enough to write a novel.
I am the owner of two cats. I say that I own them because I could murder them both and basically no one would notice. They are very cute, yes, but I’m getting fed up with all their bullshit. I don’t have insect or rodent problems in my apartment, so neither one of them has a job to perform other than to amuse me and to quell my thoughts of what it would be like to be a serial killer for a few moments during the day. I’ll admit that perform these tasks often and admirably so, but never on any consistent basis. And that’s the problem.
I know cats are stupid animals who don’t know how to respond to commands, but I think it’s a reasonable expectation that they would perform certain tasks promptly as I name them. In exchange for room, board, food, comfort, and fecal clean-up, I should be able to get cuddles whenever I want them. They don’t have to come to me when called, necessarily, but the very least they could do is not run away when I grab them to interrupt whatever stupid irrelevant cat thing they were doing to make them sit on my lap and get called a handsome young man for twenty minutes or so. They really are getting the better end of this deal, I might add.
But no. They fucking leave while I’m trying to cuddle and give them compliments. Or when they do want cuddles, I’m already annoyed at them for not giving me what I wanted earlier, so I don’t even care at that point. This is not completely their fault because of how their ancestors were domesticated (though I have my doubts — I really think that my cats choose not to accept cuddles just to spite me; it probably has to do with their need to cling onto some sort of power over me, but really, I’m the one holding all the cards).
I think there’s only one solution here: go back in time and re-train cats to be obedient and subservient. Perhaps train them specifically to my voice, so when I come back to the present, their decedents will be ready and willing to receive my commands.
This is a list of reasonable demands that I want from my cats:
An oath of undying fealty to me, their liege lord
A minimum of two YouTube-worthy acts of silliness a week, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of their surroundings
Stop using their nails when they make biscuits on me
Passiveness when I hold them and make them recoil like a gun
I probably watch this clip about once a month, which ranks among the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I’m amazed that a person could be so quick and so funny. Moments like these are why late night talk shows still have value. More than the monologues or boring celebrity interviews, this is the stuff that makes these shows — lightning in a bottle.
And as a bonus, what is probably the greatest moment in a late night talk show of all time.
I’ve been concentrating my creative efforts in other places recently, so I feel that the writing of my stand-up has suffered quite a bit. Not only am I writing it less, I haven’t been very happy with what I’ve been coming up with. I’ve been lazy with stand-up in general, which is probably very normal since I’ve achieved a moderate amount of success in writing other kinds of comedy. Plus, in stand-up, I’m still doing open mics. And since open mics are the worst, the combined comfort and shittiness has killed my motivation to perform or write stand-up. But I love stand-up and I love doing stand-up and I want to continue doing it. And I want to be great at it.
I’m pretty happy with the quality of my writing of the TV and movie scripts I’ve been writing lately. And I’m happy with the general progression I’ve been having as a writer in these areas. I think I’m doing good work and I think I’m getting better as a writer all the time. In stand-up, I think I’ve noticed a general stagnation in my writing and in my performance, though the performance part of it might be due to the face that I’m not getting up as much as I should. But I also think it’s deeper than that. I think I’m not as motivated to do stand-up because I don’t really believe in the things that I’m saying. I’ve always had a problem in communicating in a funny way the things that I actually care about and want to talk about, so most of the stuff I talk about on stage I think is generally irrelevant to me and to most of the people I’m talking in front of.
Sure, I can say these things in a decently funny way and people will laugh. But that’s not enough. It’s not enough to just make people laugh. People can laugh without leaving their houses. People have access to the funniest TV shows and movies of all time instantaneously, without the risk of spending a lot of money or having their night ruined. If people are going to leave their houses and take a chance to be entertained by me, I have to make it worth it for them. I have to be deeply, brutally, hilariously funny when I go on stage. And I’m not anywhere close to that. The delusion I have and I think all comics have in their heads is that they can achieve that one day. But in order to do that, I need to be talk about things that are actually relevant. To stand behind the things that I say. My confidence on stage has gone way down recently because I don’t believe one hundred percent in the things that I am saying. If I’m always worrying about how things are going to go over, why even say them?
Talking about cats and Star Wars isn’t enough for me anymore, unless I have actually something to say about either subject that matters. I think where hacks make the mistake of becoming hacks is when they start thinking too much about what the audience wants and what the audience cares about. It’s the right feeling, but gone in the wrong direction. If you preoccupy yourself with what the audience wants, you’ll say things just because you think that’s what they want to hear. I want to be relevant and be funny and even relate to them, but I want to do it based on my own opinions and experiences, regardless if they agree or have shared the same experience. I think I have a couple of bits that do this pretty well, but for the most part what I say on stage means nothing and is ultimately disposable.
I would say that for the most part, the best rises to the top. A lot of shit rises with it, but if you’re so good you can’t be ignored and you work hard you will achieve some sort of recognition. I’m nowhere near the top in the stand-up game because I don’t deserve to be. No one thinks of me because I don’t deserve to be thought of. I want to be the best and if I were ever able to do that, I need to start by forgetting all the miscellaneous shit and start scooping out parts of my soul and put them in the crowd’s ice cream cones. I didn’t think that metaphor would go there when I started the sentence and I don’t think it really works. But I think you know what I mean. So, if I can’t do that, why the fuck would I expect anyone else to listen to me?
A lot of recent action movies have been using North Korea as the bad guys. This makes sense in that they are the only nation we are at odds with that we don’t also exploit for money. China is probably the most sensible choice for a threatening movie villain country right now, but Chinese people buy lots of tickets to American movies, so they’re out. You won’t see many negative portrayals of China in movies anymore. Russia sort of worked for a while, but they really don’t pack the same punch as they used to after the Soviet Union fell. Plus, I’m pretty sure we’re exploiting them for money now, too. And I think that film producers are hesitant to cast Middle Eastern people as the villains in big blockbuster movies anymore.
So it falls to North Korea. Sure, their leaders are crazy and evil. Sure, they don’t get American movies over there, so we don’t have to worry about offending them. Sure, they’ve been threatening us with attacks for the past few weeks. But North Korea is not a credible villain and everyone knows it. They don’t have the resources to launch an attack on US soil or an effective attack anywhere else. Plus, it would take our military all of three hours to crush their already crumbling infrastructure. You can’t shoot down an F-22 jet with a Civil War-era cannon. It’s ridiculous. North Korea isn’t attacking nobody because even they know they will be very easily stomped. So when you see them as a threat in movies, it’s just silly.
Here’s my idea: Hollywood, as a group, invents a new country that all their movies will use to be the new threat to America. It’ll be right in that area between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East where nobody can really tell what ethnicity they are so nobody gets offended (or better yet, they just look white). And since they aren’t a real country, you can make them as evil as you want without offending anybody. In fact, they should be a combination of great movie villains and villain-like qualities. He’s how you get your movie-going public around the world to hate this new country.
They are Nazis
Their top scientist perform experiments on the populace to turn them into zombies
They hate dogs and routinely kick them
Their leader is a three-headed part dinosaur with the heads of Hitler, Darth Vader, and Jigsaw
They have outlawed gay marriage, weed, religion, pizza and football
They use adorable kittens as ammo, despite its general ineffectiveness
They have their own version of the internet where people call a number to ask a guy to look stuff up in an encyclopedia
It’s very easy to be cynical about a lot of things. A lot of times, cynicism is an appropriate response to reality, but I can’t help but think that people are cynical to protect themselves from failure. It’s easier to say that everything else sucks than admitting that you suck. “The system is stacked against me / unfair / rewards the lowest common denominator, so I’m going to not try.” How often have I blamed the crowd for my bombing when it was really just me giving a shitty performance? Often, an audience really is shitty or the circumstances of the show made it nearly impossible to do well in, but that’s also an easy crutch to use when I really do suck.
People like to be cynical to justify their own unhappiness. It’s why so many people tell you that you’ll probably fail when you say you want a career in entertainment. Even though odds are you probably will fail or you won’t get exactly what you want, they will go out of their way to tell you this because they never took a chance to do the thing that they really wanted to do. They put their cynicism onto you so they don’t have to face themselves.
As much as forceful, unfettered optimism can be sad and delusional, the same goes for relentless cynicism — but it disguises itself as wisdom. Sure, maybe something bad probably is going to happen, but what if it doesn’t? The essential part of taking risks is the belief that perhaps the worst thing won’t be the thing that happens. I don’t know if that counts for optimism as much as just keeping an open mind.
It’s hard to give up on your dreams, though. Maybe more difficult than to keep forging ahead with them. To say with finality that the thing that you’ve always wanted and dedicated your life towards achieving will always be out of reach is quite the motherfucker. Much easier is to retreat. Or to be complacent. To rely on what’s familiar or what’s comfortable because everything ahead of you is scary. I think a lot of people who go into creative fields are afraid to put themselves all in, to go to places like New York or Los Angeles because the rejection can be so final. If the people at the top, the gatekeepers, the ones with the money, tell you you’re not good enough, where else is there to go? To fail in the places where the decisions are made can feel like the final failure. People stay where they are because they don’t want to hear the thing about themselves that they’ve always been afraid to hear.
Especially when it’s much easier to stay where you are and hide behind your shield of cynicism. It’s very easy to be a bad person, that’s why it’s so bad. Because it takes no effort as a human being. Being a good person is very difficult, which is why there are so few of them. Every bad choice we make is the easiest one and every good choice is the most difficult. If your life is too comfortable, you’re probably a piece of shit.
Luke Giordano is a comedian and television writer who has written for Two and a Half Men (briefly) and Nickelodeon's Marvin Marvin. He's alright.
