Critiquing SNL

This post isn't exactly the most serious of things, but regardless.. I happened to be watching videos on YouTube and one came up in the recommendations that was a skit from a recent SNL. In general, I don't watch SNL but sometimes the skits that make it onto YouTube happen to be rather amusing. Although lots of other times the show is just kind of downright weird. I think you have to be very aware of all the pop culture related news that happened that week in order to completely get a full episode of SNL.

In any case, this particular skit was about a guy who disliked a movie that many people enjoyed, so he gets attacked for that in the form of getting arrested and interrogated. By some officers (as they are called by a character in the skit), or rather probably detectives as these characters semi resembled the characters of Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson from the long running show Law and Order SVU. Semi resembled in that their style of dress was reminiscent of Elliot and Olivia respectively (although not Elliot’s hairstyle, or rather, lack of hair; however the female character in the skit had a hairstyle reminiscent of, say, season 4 (this is off the top of my head, I may be wrong) Olivia) in that the guy had rolled up sleeves and the woman was wearing the kind of jacket that Olivia has worn on the show. However, the personalities of the skit characters were a little off - the guy did do some of the intimidating that Elliot has done but in other occasions in the skit, the guy acted too mellow while the woman was shoutier than Olivia tends to be. The skit also happened to include a part where the female character throws a chair through/at the mirrored glass which then breaks, which was sort of amusing in that I know a similar thing happened in a CI episode although in this skit again, it was a little off. In the Law and Order episode, it was the criminal who did the glass breaking although it wasn't with a chair, he smashed it with his fists and the final scene was of the detectives seen through the shattered glass. I think maybe something like that has happened in SVU but I don't remember the specifics.

Anyways, that was my pointless little critique of a recent SNL skit. I suppose it's not that surprising coming from a Law and Order fiend like myself.

Sctl pltcl rmrks

Try to guess what the title is supposed to say!

Eyelashes guy was on CNN tonight and he said things. He commentated. Basically, the gist of what he said when I was paying attention was that people need to get over the possibility of Russian interference in the election and that the country needs more unity. He also said that two wrongs don't make a right, regarding how people disrespected Obama when he was elected and how similar things are sort of happening now. Which... I don't particularly agree with, but these opinions aren't horribly abhorrent. There's some solace there. While ideally becoming more united would be a good thing, Donald Trump is not a normal politician, so I don't think we can necessarily acquiesce and become complacent (I'm not sure those words are the most accurate to express my sentiments, but I wanted to use some big fancy words).

In other matters, sort of, I have decided to begin watching a commentary by Noam Chomsky called Requiem for the American Dream. Partly because of the title but also partly because of Noam Chomsky being a famous linguist. This is sort of related to the whole Donald Trump mess in that it's apparently about how wealth has become concentrated in a very small amount of people. I will write a review when I finish watching it.

Sexiest men alive

(no, despite the title, this post is not a list of sexiest men alive as chosen by me)

For some reason, I felt like googling "sexiest man alive" although at first my keyboard suggestions suggested "in" after man, as in "sexiest man in Denmark" as in Mads Mikkelsen. Regardless. Eventually I made it to "sexiest man alive" as in the feature that People magazine runs every year in the fall. For one thing, I think it's a good thing that we have this pillar of male objectification because women certainly are objectified quite a lot in today's society, and this does the same thing to men. I looked through a list of the men who have won the honor, such as (this is not a complete list)

• George Clooney (twice!), 
• Johnny Depp (twice)
• Brad Pitt (also twice)
• Chris Hemsworth 
• Adam Levine 
• Dwayne Johnson (most recently)
• Mark Harmon (of NCIS fame which apparently [apparently meaning to my recollection of what I've read in passing around the internets about this show] is quite popular with middle aged women. I guess he is to NCIS as Patrick Dempsey is to Grey's Anatomy). 
• Tom Cruise (back in 1990! I wonder if he was better looking then than he is now. I guess there's not a huge difference, unlike some other people who I could mention.)
• Harrison Ford
• Bradley Cooper
• Hugh Jackman (there are a number of actors named Hugh - Hugh Laurie [House MD], Hugh Dancy [Hannibal] as well as this Hugh)
• Ben Affleck
• David Beckham
• Matt Damon

I am kind of surprised that Leonardo DiCaprio never won the title, especially perhaps in the year, say 2002 or 2003 or even more recently, like 2011. I can understand not doing it in 1997 because he was still quite young and boyish looking rather than manly looking (hence why he got that role in Titanic, probably) even though he was like 23 or something. I'm also surprised at the omission of Patrick Dempsey, who could have won in say the year 2008 or something, a few years after his debut on Grey's Anatomy. However, both these people got honorable mentions as some of the sexiest men alive, although not the ultimate sexiest man alive of the year as indicated by their presence on some of the covers of these issues, just not as the main event, and rather, as "more sexy men" or something along those lines. Also maybe Colin Firth could've won one year in the past. Apparently he was quite popular at one point at least as far as I'm aware (I may be wrong). People magazine's website has a gallery of all the Sexiest Man Alive covers if you'd like to take a look for yourself. I'm curious about the other men who got honorable mentions in these issues, aside from Leo and Patrick. I wonder if Vincent ever got an honorable mention (which would probably have been in the early 2000s, if at all) or if Chris Meloni (Elliot in SVU) did. Or maybe Jared Leto, one of those years. Maybe not for the way he looked in Requiem for a Dream, since that was not exactly a stereotypical 'sexy man' look. It was something more along the lines of this quote which I have mentioned before: "I don't like good looking guys; I like them skinny and pale like they're dying." But maybe when he didn't look like that. Maybe Tom Hanks too perhaps may have gotten an honorable mention years ago. 

Additionally, I wonder how the sexiest man alive of the year is chosen. I only could find a little bit about this from someone who worked for People magazine, in which they said that they considered who the readers wanted to be in the magazine and also who had a big year. Interestingly enough, last year would have been as good of a year as any to give Leo the title, because he finally won an Oscar so why not give him the honor of being sexiest man alive as well? I would consider that to have been a big accomplishment especially since it was a long time coming.

I am surprised that Johnny Depp won in 2009 (just take a look at the cover) because he did not, based on the magazine cover, look particularly good. In fact he looked kind of seedy and creepy like someone who you would try to avoid in a bar. I am not super surprised that George Clooney won (twice) because he is good looking. Although on the other hand I have a personal aversion to him as a person due to some unsavory things about Leonardo DiCaprio that he happened to say in a magazine interview that I happened to read in a grocery store years ago. So he is good looking but I don't like him. Vincent, on the other hand, looked better 15 years or so ago, but despite his current appearance (that sounds rather mean...) I think he's a nice person (and a good actor) and that's what counts. ("I like you way better than George Clooney!" is a thing that I could theoretically say to Vincent)

[an aside: as I write this post, I looked up Jude Law who won the title in 2004, 12 years ago and some pictures of him more recently came up and he doesn't exactly look as good as he used to, which is causing me to laugh and screech in the middle of the night. Alas. Time is kind to some but not others. I don't understand why it had to be kind to George Clooney and not Vincent.] 

[also: another thing causing me to laugh and screech is having watched this video of Chris Hemsworth (the sexiest man alive a few years back) reading various things as he is Australian and Americans - me included - love foreign (particularly British and Australian) accents. I don't know why I expected his voice to sound the exact same as Jesse Spencer who is also Australian but in any case it doesn't which really shouldn't be that surprising because, let's see, Vincent and eyelashes guy (or, Anderson Cooper) are both American with a neutral accent yet their voices do not sound similar. Incidentally, the thought of Jesse Spencer made me think of House MD and the time when House said "That is exactly why you can't touch my markers" to Chase which then made me think of the time in the S1 episode "Poison" where Chase had to impersonate a CDC worker on the phone and said something along the lines of "The CDC is not available..." in a bad American accent.]

A good part of this blog post could be aptly titled "A stream of consciousness from yours truly."

During the process of looking at all the stuff regarding the sexiest men alive, I had the idea of an "ugliest man alive" as a contrast to the sexiest man alive. If that were a thing I would eagerly nominate that horrible thing who I think would have no problem winning the title. Also a good source for other people as runner ups would be... the online dating website. This is actually a thing that I sort of am considering doing on my blog here, but it would be quite mean... and I can be mean, but I'm not sure if I want to be that mean. Plus, if someone found this blog and traced it back to me, I doubt a post like that would reflect positively on me. I've said too much already. 

More theoreticality

Another open theoretical letter, or rather just some thoughts.... (another title for this post could be "Dating advices wanted" which would probably be rather accurate) 

Recently, I happened to look through the photos of JW Anderson's most recent fashion show, FW17. This show had many looks which incorporated crochet, which I thought was interesting because I learned to crochet a few months ago. In addition to the crochet-wear, another thing that caught my attention (unsurprisingly) was one of the models in this show - he was quite eye catching! Probably the thing that caught my eye was that he was very blonde like another person who was the subject of a recent post. So, naturally, I had to try and find out the name of this model and after a bit of searching around, I did, and I was quite pleased with myself. Apparently he is German. Also apparently he is a rather new model so he hasn't done very much modeling work so far. I hope that he does more modeling work in the future so that there will be more pictures of him that I can look at because more good looking people to look at never killed anybody, and I'm certainly probably not going to find good looking people to look at on the online dating website. In any case, it makes me wistful over that particular good looking person who was the subject of a recent post and who is also very blonde and could be a model because of his appearance. I wonder if he has German ethnicity, or Swedish, or Danish or Norwegian. Perhaps eastern European. I have no idea. His name is not obviously (or subtly) Scandinavian/German like the name "Mikkelsen" (Danish, as in the actor Mads Mikkelsen) or "Müller" (German, as in the Fußballspieler für Bayern München Thomas Müller) or "Skarsgaard" (Swedish, as in the actor Alexander Skarsgaard) or even "Wilberg" (as in... it goes without saying). I would have mentioned Italian names or perhaps French-esque names but stereotypically Scandinavians and Germans are supposed to be blonde so I went with that. In any case, I know barely anything about him, much less which particular European country his ancestors were from. Although there are some other people who I do know the details of their ethnicity, that's not the subject at hand. 

To the subject of taking initiative, on one hand it would be a good (or perhaps not terribly horrible) thing to do, but on the other hand, why not just let people live their lives and not go intruding and expecting to be given an answer/attention and so on and so forth. Plus, he could possibly be gay, in which case I'd feel very foolish. So, perhaps the opening line could be "Before I go any father, are you gay?" Getting the important things out of the way first... In one way, that would be a good thing to say because then I would have my answer to that but on the other hand it would also be a weird thing to ask right off the bat and therefore probably I should avoid saying that. Basically, the best solution is to just not say anything because I have no idea where to start in a way that would feel genuine to me and also not be terribly off puttingly WEIRD. I don't know if people starting out conversations like that has ever been successful. I wonder how I would react if someone asked me "Before I go any farther, are you a lesbian?" I would probably say no, I guess. (the uncertainty here is not about being a lesbian, but rather about how best to react to a question like that. Another possible reaction could be "Why (insert optional profanity here) are you asking me that?!" or if it were asked by that horrible thing, merely a "FUCK OFF!!!") In any case, if I ever come up with some normal conversation ideas as well as some initiative, I will let you all know how that goes. Ideally it would go well and I would not make an impression of "she is really weird and I don't think I want to be around someone like that." I'm not sure if maybe I already blew it with the hair touching event. It is very possible that I did. I wonder if he remembers that. I don't think I'd mind too much if he does indeed remember that, but I would mind if it caused his impression of me to be "she is really weird and I don't think I want to be around someone like that." In which case, refer to my previous post where I mentioned an apology about the hair touching event. 

I have touched
the hair
that was on
your head

and which
you probably
thought
was WEIRD

Forgive me
It was soft
So blonde
and so dazzling.

(If my former apology isn't good enough, here is another one in a more poetic form. This particular poem structure lends itself perfectly to this purpose. Me writing poems like this actually goes back all the way to the 8th grade when we had an assignment to do such, and the concept caught on and I began to write many, many more. Incidentally, it was also back in middle school when I noticed (although I didn't take particular note of) the very blonde hair and it was eye catching back then too.)
I also have to wonder how much on the scale of weirdness that that poem would be for something to tell him. I feel like it could definitely be pretty far up there. Perhaps somewhat less weird than the previous theoretical open letter, just since it's shorter, but still probably pretty weird. It would be somewhat more relevant though than something like "What do you think about the topic of drug addicts/addiction?" which is something that could possibly lead to an interesting conversation, but on the other hand is also an incredibly odd thing to tell someone who you barely know anything about as a conversation starter. "Hello. I think you are good looking so please talk to me." That one is worse in some ways, one way being that it does come across as rather desperate but on the other hand, is quite blunt about my intentions which is a quality that I value. 

As an aside, I think "More good looking people to look at never killed anybody" should be another one of my quotes, along with "Nobody plans on becoming a drug addict" and "You have nice teeth" and "I only like him because of his eyelashes" and "Full Metal Jacket was a strange movie but it did stick with me, apparently." I think these are some quotes that nicely sum up myself. (I put them in chronological order to the best of my memory of when I first came up with them) Also, an honorable mention to a quote that isn't mine but is one that I like: "Maybe in a few years I'll be a more uplifting person." Guess/Remember who said that? (it is the same person who was the subject of the "You have nice teeth" quote. He said that quote probably about 10 years ago because I remember reading it in an interview that was done regarding the album All the Stars and Boulevards, which is from 2005.)

Album review: Turn on the Bright Lights

Firstly, an errant thought on none other than eyelashes guy: I just watched him commentate on CNN a little bit and had the realization that he seems to be rather reasonable when he commentates and he doesn't yell and shout at/over the other commentators like some do. So I guess that's a nice thing that I hadn't explicitly thought of in the past. 

I know technically you're supposed to do reviews of things (movies, music, tv, etc) that have recently been released but I just do them based on what's new and/or interesting to me in terms of things that I've watched/read/listened to regardless of if I'm 15 years late such as for this review of an album released in 2002 when I was only a small child. 

Now, onto the main topic here. In the sort of recent past, the Killers covered a song called Obstacle 1 by the band Interpol. I listened to this cover and thought Flowers did a good job of it and that the song was interesting. So I ended up listening to the original version of the song which Flowers did quite a good job of mirroring. Generally, covers shouldn't stray too far from the original song. Usually I find myself more amicable towards covers of other songs by bands that I already like rather than covers by other people of songs by bands that I like. Hence, I enjoy the Killers covering Obstacle 1 and Muse covering Please Please Please (which is far superior to the original version in my opinion), but I can't be certain that I'd enjoy, say, some other band/singer covering Mr. Brightside or something. Hopefully you get the idea. In any case, in addition to listening to Interpol's Obstacle 1, I branched out a little bit into another song from the same album (Turn on the Bright Lights - 2002) called NYC. It's an interesting song to say the least. Rather mellow and morose at the same time. Obstacle 1 is a bit more upbeat but at the same time it is also morose. Eventually I listened to the album in its entirety - 11 songs. Overall, it's a morose album. I consider it morose as opposed to melancholy which is a word I use to describe All the Stars and Boulevards by Augustana (plus some of their other songs could be described as such) along with thoughtful which describes all of their songs. Having looked up the definitions of morose and melancholy, the latter means something along the lines of a thoughtful sadness which I think makes pretty good sense to describe All the Stars and Boulevards. Morose means gloomy which is a fair enough description of Turn on the Bright Lights. (huh, both of those album titles are sort of long and wordy) 

Overall, the lyrics of the songs on Turn on the Bright Lights range from slightly weird to very weird. Which in some cases works/isn't a particular detriment to the songs but in other cases I don't think it really helps. I think perhaps the lyrics are just a little too weird for me to enjoy the album in full although I do like a few of the songs off of it. Perhaps it's like the people who like Mr. Brightside and Somebody Told Me and All These Things That I've Done off of the Killers' album Hot Fuss but don't particularly care for the rest of the album for whatever reason. 

So, in conclusion, I'm not completely sold on this album and it didn't jump out at me like "wow, what a great album!!" although again there are a few songs off of it that I like. It's possible that (this is a sentence that would require the subjunctive in Spanish, by the way) this album might grow on me if I listened to it more, but I'm not sure if I particularly want to listen to it in full again. I suppose I like this band ever so slightly more than the Strokes, who I tried to get into but just couldn't find any songs of theirs that I particularly liked even after going through like the first 5 that popped up in search results so which I assume are the most popular. I would've thought that I would have found at least one song in that selection that I at least sort of liked but alas, I didn't. However, Instant Crush (which isn't really a Strokes song though) is a good song. I guess I like (?!?!) the Smashing Pumpkins ever so slightly more than the Strokes because there are about 5 songs of theirs that I know, and I don't know any Strokes songs. Even though I don't particularly like the Smashing Pumpkins, I know a few of their songs and occasionally for reasons unknown (see what I did there?) feel compelled to listen to them - these songs comprising of 1979, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, Disarm, and Today. Perhaps I could throw Ava Adore on this list as well. But that's it. And I don't even like those songs, I just occasionally for some reason feel compelled to listen to them. A trivia is that the intro to the Smashing Pumpkins' song Today is rather similar to My Chemical Romance's song I Don't Love You. I think MCR was somewhat influenced by the Smashing Pumpkins. However, Gerard seems like a nice person but Billy Corgan just doesn't and I think this is part of why I don't like the Smashing Pumpkins. By this point this post has gotten rather off track from the main subject of Interpol to then the Strokes to then the Smashing Pumpkins with an allusion to the Killers thrown in and then to MCR. So this here will be the end of this long winded post.

Poetry

(bad, cheesy poetry, to be specific)

Here are some poems I have composed; they are on the subject of eyelashes guy in an assortment of styles.

"This is Just to Say"

I have watched
the commentator
that was on
CNN

and whom
you probably
don't
care about

Forgive me
But those eyelashes
So long
and so magnificent

A haiku

Eyelashes guy - wow!
I am just fascinated
by those eyelashes

A sonnet (following the stanza structure and rhyme pattern but not in iambic pentameter because I just don't have the energy to put in that much effort.)

Eyelashes guy, I gaze at thee
When on CNN you speak
It is your eyelashes I desire to see
Although your opinions I critique

Your eyelashes are just magnificent
And your eyeballs rather blue
By others much money has been spent
To have eyelashes like you

Your eyelashes drew my attention 

And I what I had to do
Was to research your political affiliation

I'm not a conservative like you

Sometimes you say things with which I disagree

But you're a conservative and that's just how it's going to be

I tried to come up with a limerick, but I couldn't think of anything. [as with all posts about eyelashes guy, I dearly hope he never reads this.] 

pltcs

(The title of this post is the word "politics" but with the vowels removed, kind of like the title of that one song, Thnks fr th Mmrs. As you can see, I am getting creative with my blog post titles now.) 

This post is about partly becoming more open minded (a topic which I think I have discussed a little in the past) and also about being "out of touch." It has to do with politics so if that's not your cup of tea then perhaps don't read further.

As you may know, eyelashes guy does a podcast in addition to writing political commentary and offering it on TV. So I am listening to an episode of said podcast where eyelashes guy interviews a colleague of his who covers politics and entertainment. During the podcast, they ragged on the celebrities who have made an implorement to Congress members urging them to not support Donald Trump basically. Additionally, eyelashes guy has criticized Meryl Streep for the speech she gave recently at an awards ceremony, for which eyelashes guy has received criticism (mind you, on twitter) for. In any case, I was sort of surprised to hear that from him basically that people don't want to hear about politics from celebrities and said celebrities are 'out of touch' and (my quotation marks) "real Americans" don't identify with those celebrities... things along those lines I guess. In any case, people don't have to listen to what celebrities say about politics if they don't want to, but I see no reason why celebrities can't/shouldn't voice their opinions on the matter. Certainly there are some people out there who agree with them. Whatever. I don't remember exactly the points he made or his guest on the podcast so I'll end this part here. I get somewhat disappointed when eyelashes guy says something stupid (or more eloquently, something I disagree with) but I guess it comes with the territory, him being a conservative. So all I can do is just hope that the next political issue he decides to opine on is one where his opinion is one that I at least partially agree with. Who knows. We'll just have to wait and see.

On a sort of relevant topic to the previous paragraph, here are some thoughts about being "out of touch" as people in/around liberal city areas are called. Maybe, another way to look at things is that people out in the sticks of Texas and other Republican areas are the ones who are out of touch with the city folk. I wonder if they have ever considered that way of seeing it - it's always the people in the big liberal cities that are accused of being out of touch (of which I would say that I belong to... I wouldn't personally consider myself to be ashamed/otherwise unpleased with the state of supposedly being "out of touch," but I'm sure there are people who would be more than ready to criticize me for it).  

I'm kind of sick of writing this post about political issues so this will be the end of it. Probably why I don't plan on becoming a political writer or a politician. The subject can be kind of interesting sometimes, but other times or when you've just had too much of it it can be a drag. Particularly when eyelashes guy says something you disagree with. I'm not a professional political writer nor do I claim or plan to be one. However, sometimes the thoughts just need to be put to keyboard.