I am of the belief that one of the best ways to probe the behavior of modern society is by reading blogs (watching TV is the other way).  I read a lot of blogs on topics ranging from entertainment to sports and technology to politics.   I read good blogs and bad blogs.  I read blogs by well respected and eloquent writers, and I read blogs by people who can barely use a QWERTY keyboard.  I read blogs by musicians, photographers, and art students, and I read blogs by sports pundits who will never play the sport they’re critiquing.  I even read Mike Florio.  Many times these blogs stir positive and negative emotions inside me, but I never let those emotions overwhelm me.  I never let it get to a point where I need to comment on the blog and either praise or crucify the blogger because I understand that everyone has a right to their own opinion, whether it is the same as mine or not.  Every blogger is just exercising their First Amendment rights, and that is why I fundamentally respect every blogger and his or her forum.  In a way, I kind of like every blogger. 

With that being said, I fucking can’t stand food bloggers.

Now, there are some good food blogs that I can understand.  These are the ones that post recipes, review restaurants, or just simply talk about food.  The ones that perplex me are the ones by so called “foodies.”  These are people who, I guess, have really strong opinions about food.  There is an unquestionable air of pretentiousness among them.  These are people who like some foods because they’re not popular.  These are people who write things on their blogs like “donuts are so 2009″ and “red velvet?  Ha!  I guess, if you’re like everyone else.”  Statements like these make me feel embarrassed, unfashionable, and dumb.  In all honesty, I really like red velvet cupcakes and I was completely unaware of the great donut fad of two years ago.

I suppose the disconnect between me and these food hipsters is that I still stubbornly view food as a necessity and not a luxury.  To me, being hypercritical about food is like being a snob about air.  It would be like someone from Bellingham, Washington making fun of downtown Houston’s air quality index.  However, clothing is also a necessity, yet fashion blogs don’t seem to irritate me.  I admit that I am somewhat conscious about my wardrobe, so I am pretentious in that regard to an extent.  But no matter how pretentious I become, I don’t see that as ever underscoring the fact that I eat to survive and, because of that, I respect all food whether it was fashionable last spring or not.

Maybe I’m the one who is out of touch with modern society.  Maybe the existence of food blogs means that food is now an American luxury.  It sounds like there might be a social and/or political explanation for all of this, but I’ll leave that for other bloggers to contemplate.  For now I’m going to take a walk outside and breathe Los Angeles’ smoggy air while I still can before someone criticizes me for it.

At some point around the middle of the last decade I stopped listening to pop radio.  This wasn’t an indictment on radio stations or pop music.  There are a lot of modern music radio stations that I like, and there are plenty of pop songs that I enjoy listening to.  However, sometime in the past ten years the traditional “Top 40″ radio station became “Top 15″ radio.  They’ve contracted their playlists to only include the most popular ten to fifteen songs of the past twelve months, and being that today’s most popular music artists mostly make unlistenable music, listening to “Top 40″ radio for any extended amount of time has become a sonic assault on human intelligence.

With that said, over the past week I consciously chose to listen to the local Top 40 radio station on my commute to and from work, which constitutes more than ninety minutes each day.  The reason I decided to do this was because one of my favorite singers has a new single and I wanted to hear her new song on the radio.  (Note:  I have heard this song plenty of times on the internet, but there is still some satisfaction in hearing one of your favorite singers on terrestrial radio.)  This song is What the Hell by Avril Lavigne.  (This may surprise some of you, but don’t attempt to judge me on my taste in music.  Avril Lavigne is better at what she does than you are at whatever it is you think you do for a living, so shut the hell up.)

This was like making a deal with the devil.  In exchange for hearing What the Hell on the radio, I would have to listen to music I don’t normally like.  So far, the devil is getting the better end of the deal.  I have yet to hear What the Hell.  What I have heard is countless hours of unbearable music from people who are theoretically musicians.  This has been an ungratifying experience.  These are my top ten observations from listening to this radio station:

1. I don’t know 70% of the artists on this station.  Many of the songs sound the same and sometimes I don’t even know when a a song ends and another begins.
2. Usher deserves more credit than he is getting, which means that his music shouldn’t be playing on the station I’ve been listening to.
3. The differences between LMFAO and BOB are negligible.
4. The Black Eyed Peas make good music, even though will.i.am is just a dork with a synthesizer.
5. I can hear Katy Perry’s breasts coming through my car speakers
6. Drake doesn’t rap.  He just rhythmically talks like a tool. 
7. Rihanna is awful.
8. As far as this radio station is concerned, rock music is non-existent.
9. There is such a thing as “real hiphop,” and Fareast Movement isn’t it.  They should do a “collabo” with Black Eyed Peas and call it “Collabo.”
10. I’m convinced that Lady Gaga has a bigger penis than I do.

I’m not the first one and I won’t be the last to state the obvious fact that MTV hardly plays music videos.   As of January 2011, the only time of the day that MTV plays music videos is for three hours very early in the morning when mostly everyone on the west coast is still sleeping.  The rest of the day MTV airs reality and game shows aimed at pregnant teenagers, New Jersey people, and homosexual college students.  This hardly constitutes “music television.”  The last music video I can recall seeing in its entirety on MTV was Bye Bye Bye by ‘N Sync, and that was way back when Carson Daly still gave a damn about children’s after-school programming.  In this age and time where it’s cool to be ironic, MTV programming is equivalent to why hipsters think Pabst Blue Ribbon is good beer:  it is what it is not.

The same can be said about MTV’s sister channel VH-1.  What started out as an adult-contemporary music video channel, it is now a bastion of pop-culture that plays on the nostalgia that old people (read: born before 1980) have for things not current.  Over the holidays I was surfing DirecTV and ended up watching an old Saturday Night Live episode on VH-1.  I was watching a Weekend Update segment from, I would guess, around 2001 with Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon.  As they were wont to do, these faux news-anchors were acting like sarcastic baboons.  My wife, who was watching with me, laughed a lot and said, “Wow, this is actually funny.”

I should point out that my wife hates Saturday Night Live.  She doesn’t think it’s remotely funny; in fact she thinks that it’s insulting to anything with a functioning brain.  She’s not the only person who shares this sentiment.  Many people say that the golden age of SNL was in the 1970s with iconic comedians like John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Dan Aykroyd.  Current episodes of SNL are widely panned for being unfunny and overly contrived, and I suspect the only reason people tune in is because of its musical guests (being a musical guest on SNL is still a big deal). 

I agree with most people on this issue. I started watching SNL in the early 1990s with Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, and David Spade.  Those guys made me laugh.  Nowadays I feel that SNL isn’t really all that funny, and I’ve felt this way ever since the late 1990s.  However, when I was watching that old episode of Weekend Update last month, I was genuinely laughing, even though I suspected that I wasn’t laughing when I saw that segment when it first aired roughly nine years ago.  I clearly remember hating Jimmy Fallon.  What has changed?  Was Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon’s comedy ahead of its time?  Am I losing my mind?

A while back I read an article in which Lorne Michaels (the creator and executive producer of SNL) responded to criticism about SNL.  He said that SNL is not as bad as people say it is, nor was it as good as people remember it was.  This struck me as being surprisingly prophetic about everything. 

As a whole, we seem to be surprisingly cynical about the present.  We stress out about our jobs, we worry about feeding our kids, and we fear nuclear war.  Every decision we make is approached with skepticism.  Is this show funny?  Who should I vote for?  Will this affect who I am?  When will I die?  Instant information via smartphones and the internet has made the present a hyper-reality.  As such, we’ve become over-nostalgic for the past.  This is why 30-year-olds like watching VH-1 and why extreme Republicans like dressing up as 18^th century New Englanders.  Like Saturday Night Live, we’re under the illusion that the past was always better, even though it was probably the same as it is today.

Something about this makes me feel sad for the present, but then I remember that it is what it is not.

Today is January 11, 2011, but many people, mostly superstitious types, women, and radio DJs, like to point out that it is “1/11/11.”  I suppose that this is a lot of “1′s” in a date, which makes people want to romanticize its significance.  I’m not a warlock or a druid, so I don’t know for certain if there really is anything special about today.  So far the day has started off without anything noteworthy happening.  When I woke up the sky wasn’t black or red; it was normal looking.  The Second Coming is still on hold.  Drake’s music still sucks.  I was told to make a wish at 11:11, and as far as I know, I’m still not a triillionaire.  Maybe I should try again at 11:11pm.

The only reason I know that today’s date has a lot of “1′s” is because people can’t stop talking about it on Facebook and Twitter.  If these social vectors did not exist, I’m fairly certain that January 11, 2011 would only be appreciated for what it really is:  Tuesday.  “1/11/11″ (which is technically “01/11/11″) is really about nothing, which ultimately means that people on the internet can’t stop talking about nothing.

I’m back.  Let’s try this again before November 11.

One of my worst qualities is that I’m not a very confident guy, and this is reflected in how I dress myself.  I don’t know anything about what is good or bad in clothing or fashion, which is probably the direct result of being colorblind.  To keep things simple for me, all of my clothes are very plain and boring and are either black, white, gray, or blue.  Combine my boring wardrobe with my boring haircut and generally boring countenance and you have yourself one boring-looking dude.

I’m a boring, non-confident dude.

However, it’s a good thing that I don’t have to be particularly creative when I dress up for work.  I don’t have a uniform, but I do have to wear a shirt and tie (which is kind of like a uniform, I suppose).  I currently rotate through a set of seven or eight dress shirts of varying colors and styles, and I have accompanying  pants and ties that have been pre-approved (by friends, sales associates, baristas, strangers, etc.) to match my shirts.  But while my work wardrobe is fairly idiot-proof, there are two shirts that I prefer more than the others.  I have no idea why, but these two shirts make me look absolutely phenomenal, and whenever I wear them to work I exude confidence into the stratosphere.  I don’t understand John W. Nordstrom.

I’m certain that most people would agree that what you wear can affect your confidence and, conversely, your confidence can affect what you wear.  People who are confident about their bodies are more likely to wear tight clothes that accentuate their figures.  However, this standard seems to be thrown out the window every year for Halloween.  Over the past twenty years Halloween has slowly evolved from a day where kids can get candy to an excuse for adults to get drunk.  It has also inexplicably become a day for women to dress slutty and not feel guilty about it (slutty angels, slutty devils, slutty girl scouts, slutty nurses, etc.).  As a man, it would be weird of me to object to this trend, but there is something about this that kind of bothers me.  It’s not only the women who have nice figures who dress skimpy for Halloween, but women who normally don’t dress skanky seem to like to dress less on Halloween, too.  It seems that many women who were ashamed of their bodies for 364 days of the year suddenly all strip down for October 31.  Sometimes this is good, but sometimes it’s like watching a train wreck.  Now, I’m not going to make fun of fat women who do this because they have every right to dress like sluts if they want to.  It certainly takes a good amount of confidence to dress like a whore, and if you’re proud of your body (which is good) then you have every right to show it off if you want to.  But, I don’t understand why they have to wait for Halloween to do this.  I mean, if they’re really proud and confident about their bodies, then shouldn’t they dress like sluts all year long?  Why wait for a kid holiday like Halloween?

We should probably give Halloween back to the kids.

A few months ago I was on the popular website IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Data Base where uninformed movie fans go to become informed about movies that they are fans of.  I was gathering information (or “data”, I guess) about the upcoming Iron Man 2 motion picture.  Specifically, I was looking for the plot synopsis of the film.  After reading it, I concluded that the plot seemed entertaining and engaging enough for me to want to watch the film in theaters.  I also realized that Scarlett Johansson was in the movie, which made the film even more intriguing not because I enjoy her acting (which I do, sometimes), but because the tight black jumpsuit she wears as the Black Widow accentuates her large breasts.

Anyway, while I was reading the Iron Man 2 page on IMDB, I noticed that there was a Facebook “Like” button at the top of the page.  I also noticed that it said, “Jason Bautista likes this.”  “What in the name of Robert Downey, Jr. is going on here?” I asked to no one in particular.  Why is Facebook on IMDB, and why is it telling me that my friend Jason Bautista likes Iron Man 2?  Was this some kind of computer glitch?  Does Jason like all movies on IMDB, or only super hero ones?  Does Jason know about this?

I realized that I was asking the wrong questions.  I started seeing the “Like” button all over the internet.  Right now, it’s on news sites, sports sites, blogs, and just about any other website that has the potential to be Likeable.  If you’re logged into Facebook while visiting these sites, that “Like” button will tell you if any of your friends “Like” that site, and if you “Like” a site, that action will show up in your Facebook friends’ News Feed.  Or, in summary, Facebook has gone nuts and has taken over the internet.

Now, there is probably nothing wrong with what Facebook is doing.  I’ve read their privacy policy and I’ve consciously agreed to it, so, if they’re giving away my information, I can’t complain about not knowing about it (although there may be ethical issues regarding Facebook changing their privacy policy every several months).  Nevertheless, it certainly feels like all sorts of creepy.  Ever since the mid 1990s when the internet became relevant to the average person, the internet has traditionally been thought of as a mysterious place.  You could go look for information about anything discreetly and anonymously.  Your identity online could be something completely different from who you were in real life.  While this is still true, the arrival of social networking websites in the early 2000s opened up the internet.  It made people more comfortable with expressing themselves and sharing their information online.  And what we’ve realized is that people love talking about themselves.  People love sharing pictures and status updates on Facebook, and Twitter helped carry this self-indulgent bullshit to our mobile devices.  We’re witnessing the destruction of the anonymous cyberworld and entering a new era of self-glorification.  With Facebook expanding it services to beyond the Facebook domain, it isn’t shifting the paradigm.  It’s responding to it.

A lot of people don’t like this.  I am not one of them. As you may have noticed, I’ve implemented the “Like” button on my blog posts for the past several months.  This is undoubtedly self-indulgent of me to assume that anyone will Like anything that I’ve ever written.  Furthermore, I have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a formspring page to add to the degeneration of my own humility.  The limits of my ego are defined only by the limits of technology.  I have no redeeming qualities. 

As history has shown, the advancement of technology is a product of our own egos.  You’ll have to embrace it or surrender to it.  You just don’t necessarily have to “Like” it.

A few years ago I attended the wedding of my good friend from junior high school through college.  The girl he was marrying someone we had both met while we were undergraduates at UC San Diego.  She was a couple of years younger than us, and the only reason I knew her was that she hung around the same circles of friends that my girlfriend hung around with.  The exact circumstances of how my friend met his girlfriend are unknown to me, although I do know that the following episode did happen:

One afternoon in the summer of 1999 I was in my bedroom using my computer after a long day of work.  I was enjoying our newly installed high-speed cable internet and trying to figure out how to use a music downloading software called “Napster”.  This was my very first experience downloading music from the internet, so I was thinking hard about which song would have the honor of being my very first pilfer.  I decided that it would be the pop/R&B song Where My Girls At? by 702.  I secretly liked this anthem to female supremacy, so I knew I had to download it covertly so no one could make fun of me.  1999 was a very pretentious era.  As soon as I hit “Search,” my friend (who was also one of my roommates) came into my room and said, “Dude, do you know Jessica Soriano?”

“Yes.  Why?”

“Oh, man, she’s cute!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!  I’ve never met her before.  I was in the Price Center with Irene Davis, and we had just finished eating lunch when Jessica came by.  She came over and started chatting with Irene and whatnot.  She and Irene are friends or something, or maybe they have a class together.  I don’t know.  Irene introduced us and Jessica said that she’s seen me around before.  I said Oh yeah? and I just played it off cool.  I was just hoping that she wasn’t turned off by my smoking.  Anyway, I know you know every person on campus.  Is she single?  What do you think she meant when she said that she’s “seen me around”?  Do you think she’s interested?  Do you have her number?  Do you talk to her?  Could you find out if she would go out with me?”

“Yeah, I know who she is.  As far as I know she’s single.  I don’t really talk to her.  I have her number, though.”

“Dude, call her and ask her if she’d go out with me. Is that creepy?”

“I don’t know.  Let’s see.”  I picked up my Panasonic 900 MHz cordless phone and dialed Jessica’s number.  “Good afternoon, this is Chris.  May I speak with Jessica, please? … Hey, how are you? … Good, good.  Do you have a minute? …  You met my friend today in the Price Center. … Yes, him … Yeah, listen.  Hypothetically speaking, if he were to ask you out on a date, would go out with him? … OK, that’s good to hear.  Thanks.  That’s perfect. … Yes. Yes.  … Thanks, Jessica.  … Bye.”

I turned to my friend and said, “You should ask her out.”

“OK, cool.  Thanks.  702?”  he asked after glancing at my computer monitor.

“Yeah,” I said confidently.

“Haha!  Good shit.  I like that song too.  Why is it a good song?”

“I don’t know.” 

They officially started dating the following year, shortly after I moved to Florida for professional school.  A few years went by and they decided to tie the knot.  My friend asked me to be a groomsman.  In the summer of 2003, I flew to Las Vegas to attend his bachelor party and their wedding.  Curiously, I was the only person from junior high school, high school and college to have been invited.  It was one of the most fun trips I had ever had, and I was honored to have been a part of the happiest moment of my friend’s life.  At the end of the reception, my friend and Jessica walked me to my rental car.  They thanked me for flying out from the east coast and being a part of their wedding.  They also assured me, because they knew that I was going through a patch of depression at that time, that everything would be OK.  I appreciated their concern, and I was thankful to have friends like them.  I asked them if they would attend my graduation next year, and they said that they would.

Seven years later I find myself planning my own wedding.  It will be on November 6, 2010.  My friend will not be there, simply because we are no longer friends.  The reason (or reasons) why we are not friends isn’t clear to me.  The last time I spoke with him was in the parking lot of the country club where their reception was held.  I never heard from him again.  Shortly after his wedding, all his contact information became invalid.  He changed his email address, phone numbers, and IM screen names.    Additionally, he made no attempt to contact me to inform me of any of these changes.  He did not attend my graduation.  It was as if he didn’t exist anymore, despite the fact that I have pictures to the contrary. 

Every time I recall this story, it makes me feel mixed emotions.  It makes me feel stupid and naïve.  It makes me feel unlikeable.  It reminds me that my perception of myself is rarely coincident with others’ perception of me.  But most importantly, this story makes me feel lonely and insignificant.  It reminds me of the one thing about me that I am embarrassed of and hate the most:  It tells me that I have very few good friends, and the ones that I do consider good friends probably don’t feel the same way.

I’ve found myself remembering my friend more frequently lately.  This is the direct result of all the wedding planning that is slowly beginning to consume the majority of my waking hours.  As such, I have been feeling anxious and unsettled.  It’s not because I’m nervous about walking down the aisle.  I think getting married is easy.  The hard part is that all the planning makes you analyze and critique all of your life’s relationships.  Sadly, I’ve realized that my relationships are poor. The first two people I asked to be groomsmen declined.  Finding people to take part in other aspects of the ceremony has been difficult and frustrating as well.  This led my fiancée to directly ask me two days ago why I didn’t have any friends.  It came out harsher than she meant it to, but it’s a valid question.  The only answer I have for that is that I’m kind of boring.  This doesn’t necessarily make me sad, but it does make me feel uneasy, unsettled, and not good.  But gas makes me feel that way, too.  Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between anxiety and diarrhea.

I was once told by an ex-girlfriend that if you have only one good friend when you die, then you’ve had a successful life.  I don’t know if she said that because she was an unlikeable loner with no social skills or because she really meant it, but I’m starting to agree with her.  No one deserves friends, and only lucky people have good ones.  I have one person who I consider to be a good friend, and I know she feels the same way.  I suppose I’m one of those lucky guys. 

I’m looking forward to the rest of my life.

There was no greater rivalry in the 1990s than that which existed between Zack Morris and A.C. Slater.  However, while Zack was universally accepted as the leader of the Saved by the Bell gang, Slater was better than Zack in virtually every aspect of life. 

Slater was the archetype jock.  He was a tri-sport athlete who was quarterback of the football team and captain of the wrestling team.  He also played varsity basketball, even though basketball and wrestling were played in the same season.  Slater was multi-talented.   Musically, he was an exceptional drummer and artistically he was a phenomenal dancer (his skills ranged from jazz to hiphop).  He was an honors student who was offered scholarships to the University of Iowa and “California University.” 

His dynamic background made him the gang’s most intriguing person.  He grew up as a military child who lived in various cities around the country.  His father was a Major in the army and he had no mother.  His ethnicity was a mystery.  He wasn’t really white, and he wasn’t really black, but his eyes kind of made him look Asian.  (It was later revealed in an episode of Saved by the Bell: The College Years that his real last name was “Sanchez,” which makes him a Hispanic with a Jheri curl, I suppose.)  He was ostensibly a “cool person,” which excused his otherwise peculiar behavior.  His real name was Albert Clifford, though he was cool enough to go by the initials “A.C.”  He was able to get away with calling Zack “Preppie” and (his girlfriend) Jessie “Mama” without any discernable consequences.  He was socially accepted, despite the fact that it was the early 1990s and  he wore spandex and colorful parachute pants regularly. 

On the other hand, Zack was a talentless slacker, a troublemaker, and a poor student (although he did score an impossible “1502″ on the S.A.T.).  There was nothing dynamic about his background or family life.  While Slater hung out with jocks, Zack spent most of his time with Screech.  His only redeeming value may have been that he was the only person in school to own a cell phone (which was the size of a hardcover book). 

Slater was a model high school student and an overall superior human being to Zack Morris in any and every capacity and regard.  But, despite all of that, Zack Morris was still considered the alpha dog.  He was the leader of the group, the most likable student, the most popular person in school, and he nailed the head cheerleader (Kelly).  Slater always played second fiddle to Zack.  Why didn’t Slater garner the praise and recognition that he rightfully deserved?

That settles it.  A.C. Slater was a Libertarian.

In a recent poll which asked people which celebrity they would most want to party with, competitive swimmer Michael Phelps came in at No.3, with only George Clooney and Owen Wilson ranking higher.  Now, I know what you are thinking.  You’re thinking that Phelps’ high ranking has nothing to do with the fact that he’s an eleventeen-time gold-medalist and the most dominant “player” in his “sport.”  Rather, you’re thinking that people want to party with him because he presumably likes to smoke marijuana from a bong when he’s not perfecting his breaststroke (as evidenced by a grainy photograph taken from a cell phone at a fraternity party in North Carolina).  Based on this alone, it’s understandable why people would want to party with him.  Stoned people are fun!  However, this is only part of the reason why Phelps ranked so high on this list.  I’m 100% certain that Jay-Z smokes more hash than Michael Phelps, and Jay-Z likely has better dope and prettier women in his possession than America’s favorite swimmer.  Yet, Jigga Man only ranked fifth on that list.  The difference between Jay-Z and Michael Phelps is that Jay-Z is a veritable celebrity and Michael Phelps is just a regular dork who looks like McLovin’ from Superbad.  But, why does this difference benefit Michael Phelps?

There exist two types of people in American culture:  There are celebrities and there is “everyone else,” and these two groups are held to different standards in terms of how they’re supposed to behave.  As a whole, celebrities are expected to do “celebrity” things, like make movies, record albums, sign autographs, and walk down the red carpet.  And, as a whole, “everyone else” is expected to do “normal” things, like pay for movies, purchase albums, ask for autographs, and walk on the sidewalk.  And while it might seem that “everyone else” is obsessed with celebrities, we’re not necessarily enamored with them until the celebrity/”everyone else” dichotomy is broken. 

America is fascinated with things that aren’t supposed to happen, which is kind of why train wrecks like America’s Most Wanted and Cops are the longest running television shows in primetime.  In regards to celebrities, we don’t’ expect them to do “normal” things.  This is why we care so much about what kind of dog Barack Obama has.  Britney Spears isn’t supposed to go to Starbucks and drink venti mocha Frappuccinos like everyone else, but this is why the TMZ cameras are always there when she does.  A celebrity like Chris Brown is supposed to be known for being an R&B singer, but we care more about him now more than ever because he went gangsta on Rihanna.  Celebrities aren’t supposed to be crooks, but we’re obsessed with Lindsay Lohan going to jail.  By that same token, America is equally captivated with “everyone else” when they do “celebrity” things.  This is why America is in love with YouTube sensation Tim Zonday; John Legend wouldn’t have gained nearly as much attention if he was the one who sang Chocolate Rain.  This is the philosophy behind all of the amateur pornography that’s rampant on the internet.  When it comes down to who they would rather see naked on the internet, the average internet surfer would pick their next door neighbor over porn star Jenna Jameson.

As a society, we have things that we don’t want.   We are generally disinterested when celebrities do celebrity things, which is why no one cares that Judd Apatow is a machine that makes three movies a year.  Similarly, we are indifferent when regular people do regular things, which is exactly why no one watches Keeping Up With the Kardashians.  The reason why we want to party with Michael Phelps is not that he’s a pothead.  We want to party with him because he was caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to do.  We want things that aren’t supposed to happen.  This is the secret behind the progression of culture.  Technically, I’m not supposed to be saying that.

But, that’s why you’re still reading this.