A Pop Junkie’s Guide to the Apocalypse

Some claim it will be on May 21, 2011. Others say it will be December 2012. Still others say it will be when Sarah Palin is elected president. Regardless of the theories, one thing is agreed upon by most people who have very little faith in logic: the world is destined for a sudden, instant, fiery end, and God is behind the trigger. Normally, I am not one for Doomsday theories, but when a narcissistic crackpot fresh off the pulpit of the First United Baptist Loony bin emerges to tell us that May 21 is the day God will officially turn his back on the Earth and take his chosen few with him, proper attention must be paid.

I don’t know much about Heaven. For that matter I don’t know much about Hell, either. I don’t know if mine will be a soul that deserves saving or if I am destined to ride shotgun with the Dark Lord for all eternity. All I know is that at some point in my life I have eaten meat on a Friday, I have used the Lord’s name in vein, I have neglected to observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, and I have never once confessed my sins and asked for forgiveness.

On the other hand, I have never killed, raped, committed adultery or coveted another man’s wife. I do honor my parents, I usually treat others the way I would want to be treated, I let my neighbors bear their own false witness if it please them, and I have never worn an Ed Hardy shirt. One time I jumped out of my car in the middle of a blizzard to dig a guy’s car out of a snow bank, so I have that going for me, but who knows if that is enough for eternal salvation. I am not a gambling man, but if Jesus does come back any time soon to start kicking ass and taking names, odds are the cards are stacked against me, and the dealer always wins.

Maybe the world will end on May 21. Maybe the sky will turn black and seas will boil. But maybe they won’t. Maybe, as the Mayan scholars suggest, the Earth will be reborn. Maybe all evil will vanish and the meek will inherit the Earth as Jesus promised in that fateful Sermon on the Mount. But maybe not. It is important to remember that someday the world will end one way or another. Whether you are a student of science, a devote believer in the divine, or one of the billions in between, common rationale tells us that someday the sun will burn itself out. Someday life on this planet will no longer exist. Someday a series of events will occur that will render the world extinct, and the theoretical cause of such an event is between you and your faith alone. One thing is for sure, though: if I happen to see four horsemen riding though the streets leaving a wake of conquest, war, famine, and death, I want to make sure my iPod is loaded with a playlist to keep me occupied in that great big waiting room in the sky marked “Purgatory”.

Lists like this are difficult because no one wants to be like a bad DJ who only plays the songs he wants to hear and wonders why he isn’t getting calls to play the Greenberg Bar Mitzvah. You also don't want to be like a narcissistic music journalists out to exert a smug sense of self-proclaimed musical superiority by listing songs no one has ever heard of. The goal here is to create a list for the common man. A list of music almost everyone knows and can relate to. To re-identify music we all know by heart to make it Apocalypse-ready.  And if my contribution to mankind is providing the soundtrack to Jesus Christ’s great “Welcome Back” party, then I can spend the next 5 months being tormented by locusts in peace. And now for your reading pleasure: The Top 25 Songs For The Apocalypse

25) Like A Prayer - Madonna
                When I think of a figure that encompasses the essence of modern Christianity in every shape and form, I think of Madonna. And when I think of a pop princess who owned the 1980’s with a series of controversial songs, videos, and stage antics, which absolutely defy every word of the Canonical Gospels, I think of … Madonna. But even those of us with checkered reputations and questionable morals can still have a connection to the great music critic in the sky. Madonna’s version of God is an interesting one: omnipresent, yet understated. Quiet, yet powerful. “Like a child you whisper softly to me/you’re in control just like a child”. An appropriate image for anyone who has questioned His existence. God’s message is not always clearly pronounced. We don’t get 24-hour news updates on his plan. There is no Google alert app to alert us of His latest move, but He is all around us if we stop and listen.  Reminiscent of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin who addressed the story of his life in the form of a letter to his son, Madonna went ahead and composed her letter to the only being that matters, with a single unaccompanied spoken “God”, just in case there was any question about who she was talking about.  
Added Bonus:
In 1989 the song’s video was too much for Pepsi to handle, but if my tenure in Atlanta has taught me anything it is that God is a Coke drinker. 

24) Swing Low Sweet Chariot – Eric Clapton
                If the Rapture is anything like the smooth, mellow sounds of Eric Clapton’s recording of this early 20th century African-American spiritual, then there may be hope for us all yet. It has been recorded in whole or in part by over 60 artists since 1909 making it one of those songs everyone knows the words to in case you were thinking of starting your very own “Purgatory sing-a-long”, but personal preference is for Clapton’s 1975 reggae-esque recording. The rules of redemption are not entirely clear, but we as a people need to believe that we can all be saved, otherwise what is the point? This is the kind of song that reminds us that our God is a merciful one and we all have the capacity to feel His love if we can just get the reggae guitar riff right.

23) Hell’s Bells – AC/DC
                Familyradio.com estimates that approximately 200,000,000 people will be taken up and given eternal life in Heaven. That is about 3% of the world’s population. If this is true, then the other 97% are going to need an anthem too. Something with a good beat that we can dance to. Though it may be considered relatively tame by today’s standards, Hell’s Bells offers the perfect soundscape for God’s neglected children. Hell’s Bells is the song I envision being played while Beelzebub himself scorches the Earth from behind the wheel of his lamp black hearse with wheels of fire. Much of the AC/DC catalogue offers perfectly acceptable follow-up songs in the same vein as Hell’s Bells including Highway to Hell and Back In Black. If you are certain you will be left behind in May, you are still going to be stuck on Earth to be tormented until late October, and there is nothing worse than having to repeat the same song for 5 straight months. You are going to want to be prepared.      

22) Come Sail Away – Styx
                Let’s remember for a moment that Christianity is not the only religious movement with an ultimate endgame, and we owe it to Scientology to give them their day in the sun. While Come Sail Away is packaged as a nice metaphor for leaving Earth and traveling to God’s Kingdom led by his one and only son, but it is packaged better as a LITERAL interpretation of L. Ron Hubbard’s dogmatic theory of spacecrafts returning to Earth to rescue Thetans and reuniting them with the Galactic Confederacy led by Xenu. All due respect to Scientology, but if the latter sentence doesn’t make you laugh, I am giving up show business. While, as a song, it is pretty hard to take seriously, God, no doubt, has a sense of humor, and playing it is sure to put a smile on His face which may go a long way. Just don’t repeat it too many times as he is also vengeful and has unspeakable powers.

21) Amazing Grace – Elvis
                Let’s forget for a moment that the author of Amazing Grace was directly involved in the slave trade of the late 18th century and was surely responsible for some of the most reprehensible acts of human misery mankind has ever known (certainly the Christian Church has already forgotten. Ba-Zing!). Let us look at Amazing Grace for what it is: the most well-known Christian Hymn about repentance for a sinful life and reaffirmation in the one true God. While a little on the clichéd side, this list could not be considered complete without it. It is probably easier to list artists who have not recorded their own versions of the song, but since we are creating an homage to the one true King in the sky, the best bet is to offer up the version by the one true King here on Earth. To be fair, including Elvis is something of a gamble. It is hard to say what God thinks of Elvis and his false Idolatry especially when considering that Elvis’ final moments were served sitting on a toilet, and what kind of merciful God allows that to happen?

20) Ain’t Too Proud To Beg – The Temptations
                If the Greeks taught us one thing about the Gods, it is that they are not wild about pride. If Catholicism has taught us one thing it is that a place in Heaven can be earned by admitting sins and praying for forgiveness, and with that, I offer you Ain’t Too Proud To Beg. The message is simple: there is nothing I wouldn’t give to be embraced by your love, and what savior wouldn’t want to hear that? Sure this may be an 11th hour confession, but some things are truly better late than never. If it is the difference between an eternity relaxing on a cloud versus an eternity of little guys in red pajamas poking me with pitchforks, I am not above sacrificing my pride and groveling for forgiveness.     

19) Louie Louie – The Kingsmen
                To suggest that Louie Louie is best served as a drunken fraternity anthem is misguided. To claim no one actually knows the lyrics to the song renders you no more insightful than a drunken member of a fraternity. From a metaphorical standpoint, Louie Louie has both real-life and after-life applications. As the story of a man alone on a ship who spends all his time longing for a return to his one true love, Louie Louie is the ultimate song about returning home short of Ozzy Osborn’s vastly more overt Mama, I’m Coming Home, but Louie Louie is, quite simply, a lot more fun. It is fun enough that it offers Jesus more than enough motivation to turn water into wine when hearing it. And if you are concerned that your soul is not worth saving, you are going to have a better chance winning over a Jesus that has had a few pints.    

18) The Sound Of Silence – Simon and Garfunkle
                No one sings for the lost, isolated youth of New York City better than Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle. No song represents the manifestation of the return of a modern day Jesus better that “The Sound of Silence”. When the Prophet returns, it will no doubt, resemble a lonely man who’s warnings of the end of days will fall on deaf ears much more than a widely accepted image of the one we call Jesus. Imagine a homeless man in the middle of New York constantly shouting “The end is near”. One of these days, that guy is going to be right, and acceptance of him is going to be the difference between salvation and torment. Now the only question is: which one of the hundreds of homeless soothsayers do we listen to?      

17) Higher and Higher – Jackie Wilson
                If it is good enough for the Ghostbusters to use to walk the Statue of Liberty though New York Harbor on its way to the Manhattan Museum of Art, then it is good enough for Jesus. Appropriately enough, the iconic scene from Ghostbusters II was a successful effort to stop the chain of events leading to the end of the world. And since movies are always right, we can put our full faith behind Jackie Wilson and his signature song about emotional elevation. And of course, lyrically, the writing can effortlessly be interpreted as a homage to the Lord, so it has that going for it, which is nice.     

16) I’m Waiting For My Man – The Velvet Underground
                Despite the fact that Lou Reed obviously wrote this about a drug dealer, it has a pretty prominent Samuel Beckettean Waiting For Godot quality to it, the only difference is, in the song, the person they are waiting for actually does arrive and takes them away to a better place. Need I say more?

15) Atlantis - Donovan
                Less about the Rapture than about the natural extinction of a civilization, this Donovan narrative is more secular than spiritual. While the common sentiment is that the destruction of the world will be caused by a higher power, there is more than enough evidence to support an argument for the natural decomposition of the Earth. When factoring in human elements including overpopulation, pollution, and sprawling industry, it is only a matter of time before we become more than our inherited stomping grounds can handle. While the lost city of Atlantis is likely fictional, it acts as an appropriate hypothetical warning for the days to come not unlike George Orwell’s iconic 1984 or Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax if that is more your speed.

14) Somewhere Over The Rainbow – Judy Garland
                A provocative conundrum: our hero, Dorothy, laments her desire to find herself in a better place than Kansas. She believes her dream has come true when she awakes in the Technicolor world of Oz only to ultimately discover that there truly is “no place like home” on Uncle Henry and Aunt Em’s sepia farm. This begs the question: if and when we do find ourselves in the ultimate paradise, what is to keep us from longing to be back in our comparatively bland yet familiar mortal homes? Sure, we may have a place in God’s Kingdom, but is that really Heaven when we leave behind everyone and everything we know? And us with no ruby slippers to send us back to Kansas.    

13) After Midnight – Eric Clapton
                As far as I know in my 7 ½ seconds of dedicated/serious research, familyradio.com has not offered an exact time for the Rapture except to say it will be sometime between midnight on May 21 and midnight on May 22. The common sensibility in these cases is usually that it will happen at exactly midnight because it sounds vastly more interesting than, say, 1:23pm, and my money is on Jesus wanting to make a big entrance. If we ignore the painfully obvious question of “midnight where?” we can anticipate some crazy events when the clock strikes twelve. And soon-there-after we will finally know what “it’s all about”.

12) Paradise City – Guns N Roses
                Axl Rose, ever the modern day poet, composed what is roughly the most overt rags to riches, “take me to a better place” song of the 1980’s. There is not a lot of subtext to be discussed with this song despite the fact that Rose believed himself to be an artist. It is, though, refreshing to hear a “metal” song about travelling up instead of travelling down. Plus, the idea that Axl Rose himself could have a soul worth saving really does give hope to the rest of us dregs.  

11) Crossroads – Cream
                The metaphor of the crossroad is perhaps the most effective unofficial religious abstract known to man. Ever since Robert Johnson claimed to sell his soul to the Devil at a crossroads, the image has been a permanent fixture in American blues. Its significance is pretty self-explanatory: life is a journey and the final destination is the result of a series of directions we choose to take. Of course, if the subject of Robert Johnson comes up while discussing your mortal resume with St. Peter, it is probably better playing dumb. I doubt the Lord looks too kindly on mortals trading their souls for guitar skills. That is the very reason it is better to have this Cream version in your “End of Days” mix instead of the original by Johnson himself.

10) Graceland – Paul Simon
                Rounding out the top 10 is the title song on Paul Simon’s best solo album. While, to the untrained ear, it sounds like the story of a guy on an odyssey to the redneck Mecca, but one must remember what Graceland means to so many people. Graceland is not simply the Elvis version of the Neverland Ranch. Graceland is the Kingdom of the man, who many people believe to be, a living God. Graceland is not a place people go to see where where and how Elvis lived; Graceland is a place people go to find something about themselves. It is less a historical monument like Monticello, it is more a spiritual home like Disney World. Graceland is the story of a lost and lonely man, like so many millions of people,  searching for something more, searching for meaning, searching for faith, and he believes, for no conceivable reason that we will all be received in Graceland.  

                Who among us has not had a crisis of faith? Who among us has not questioned that which we have been taught and led to believe our whole lives? Who among us has, at least once in our lives, felt somewhat unsatisfied with our own faith? This is one of the problems with faith. It is predominantly based on a lack of concrete evidence rather than an abundance. To be people of faith we are expected to nearly ignore that which is classified as factual and follow that which is irrational. And we are to do so without the benefit of instant gratification which is a problem for those of us who prefer over-night delivery. Bono is clearly an individual who prefers expedited shipping as well. His mantra of trying to live life as a man of faith but coming up feeling unfulfilled is a tidy way to remind, not only the higher powers, but also ourselves that it is natural and human to falter in our beliefs and faith in life’s meaning. And once we find peace with our beliefs, it only acts to strengthen our personal spirituality.
Added Bonus:
If you are like most people, you are probably most familiar with the version off The Joshua Tree, but for a real treat I suggest spinning Rattle and Hum which fills the song out with a full Gospel choir. Of course the best part of a Gospel choir in a pop song is the one lady who absolutely owns it, and this version is no exception.    

8) I’ll Take You There – The Staple Singers
                The most interesting thing about this Staple Singers classic is the description of their version of Heaven. It is limited to only three holy offerings: in Heaven 1) nobody is crying 2) nobody is worried and 3) no smiling faces are lying to the races. I find it interesting that to Mavis Staples, these simple traits define of the ultimate paradise. A lot can be said about a person and their life experiences based on their idea of Heaven. The opening credits of “O Brother Where Art Thou” is underscored by “Big Rock Candy Mountain” about a place with a lake of stew, no short-handled shovels, and a jail made of tin. When listening to the lyrics, you can pretty well guess that the narrator is not exactly an aristocrat. His dream is the simple things: food to eat, rest from manual labor, and a life without fear of imprisonment. One can imagine that growing up as a black family in Chicago in the 1950’s and 60’s, the Staple Singers faced much different living circumstances than most of us are familiar with today including poverty, social and financial stressors, and racial tension. The message is simple: Heaven is equality and equality is Heaven.  

7) Rescue Me – Fontella Bass
                I failed in my effort to avoid suggesting songs that are a part of Sister Mary Clarence’s repertoire for St. Katherine’s Catholic convent choir, but there was no avoiding this one. I will give full credit to the writers of Sister Act for recognizing the spiritual applications of this song. By using it to tell the story of a group of nuns who find a deeper connection with God through popular music, the creators of Sister Act have already articulated everything I could hope to say about this song. With that I tip my hat to writer Paul Rudnick. But the final tally isn’t in yet; I have 24 other songs, and Sister Act 2 was terrible.   

6) Knockin on Heaven’s Door – Bob Dylan
                Could I possibly rank a top 25 list and not include at least one Bob Dylan song in the top 10? No, especially when considering that Dylan was an artist who was born and raised in a Jewish household, renounced his faith as a young adult, and then was reborn following a near fatal motorcycle accident. Knockin on Heaven’s Door is the ultimate song of repentance for a sinful life. It is only after recognizing sins that we are free to renounce them, but often times we are wholly unaware of our own tribulations until we are faced with our own mortality. It is not until we release the contents of Pandora’s box that we recognize the evils we have brought into the world. Knockin On Heaven’s Door is the perfect story of a man who has reached the winter of his life and realizes he has to lay down his arms in order to make his peace with God. Interestingly, when we look at the title/chorus of the song, notice that the word "knocking" is active as opposed to passive indicating that by making his peace he is now ready to ask permission to enter Heaven. The door is not already open to him as is so often the case in poetry and song, but rather he must clear the slate that is his life in order to ask to pass through to the other side.
Added Bonus:
If there is one thing that has always been bothersome about this song it is that the recorded studio version is short. At a scant 2 verse 2 chorus composition, it feels incomplete, especially for Dylan. It almost feels like the listener is being cheated out of something more. Luckily there are a bevy of live versions available that are much more complete. But do yourself a favor: but do not, I repeat do not listen to the Guns N Roses version. It will only hurt the chances of someone answering Heaven’s door for you.         

5) Spirit In The Sky – Norman Greenbaum
                This song has taught us one beautiful and universal truth about the path to eternal life: No matter who the person, no matter what the faith, no matter how devoted to one belief anyone may be, everyone can love Jesus. Faith is not fact despite what the entire population of South Carolina will tell you. The problem, of course, is that there are exactly as many different faiths as there are people in the world all with a different set of beliefs and different degrees of importance for each belief. God may be universal, but faith is individual. The result of this individuality is that roughly every person on the planet is wrong when it comes to spirituality, but that is no reason to be barred from Paradise. In case you were unaware, Spirit In The Sky is about love and devotion to Jesus Christ, and Norman Greenbaum is Jewish. In case you were further unaware, Jews have a tendency to not exactly recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah. It is a small snag, but a relatively important one to remember. When I think of God, I think of my high school geometry teacher (also Jewish) in the sense that even though I was usually wrong about what he was teaching he didn’t expect that I would understand geometry until after he taught it. He recognized the importance of not just pre-requisite knowledge of geometry, but also the adaptability to adapt to different geometric and mathematical laws. If God truly is merciful and at all understanding, He is aware that the presence of faith is more important than the tenets of faith, and the ability to adapt to spiritual evidence and circumstances is vastly more important than living a life locked into a singular set of beliefs. It shouldn’t matter what we believe in, as long as we believe.

4) Bad Moon Rising – Creedence Clearwater Revival
               This song was the catalyst for this whole list. Less spiritual and more physical, Bad Moon Rising is a premonition; an omen of the inevitable end. Ironically enough, we as a culture have a difficult time recognizing macrocosms as evidence for something more. In the last few years we have seen devastating earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. We have seen huge groups of animals spontaneously die with no explanation. We have seen icebergs melt, waters rise, disease spread, and nature vanish.  We have bore witness to some of the strangest and most horrifying events the world has ever known, and yet the concept of the end is considered ridiculous. What will it take before our collective conscience prepares for the worst? What does mankind need to experience in order to recognize the coming apocalypse? Stranger yet,  we have a tendency to examine individual events and reduce them to isolated incidents with rational explanations when we should be examining the grand scale of events as a singular forewarning of a bleak future. Because the only people that justify events as “acts of God” are religious zealots and insurance companies, we should, for the time, take God out of the equation and recognize that everything ages and everything decays including the Earth. It really is only a matter of time before Mother Earth collapses on herself. I will go on record and say I am not one of the few disciples of Harold Camping and his May 21 premonition. I don’t follow Nostradamus on Twitter. And I didn’t merge my Google calendar with that of the Mayans, but I am rational, and rationale points to the world ending someday. It probably won’t be today, and odds are it won’t be tomorrow, but it will happen someday. We can take comfort in knowing that we will get some kind of warning when it is about to happen. Maybe some bad weather and earthquakes or something…

3) Eclipse – Pink Floyd
                It doesn’t take a doctoral degree in music to figure out that Pink Floyd’s masterpiece Dark Side of The Moon is about life’s journey from birth. Based on that, it only takes a 2.0 middle school GPA to figure out that the final song on the album is about dying. To be fair, it is less about the end than it is about travelling to the unknown, the other side, the “dark” side of the moon. Eclipse is a lot of things. It is powerful. It is the climax of arguably the greatest album ever recorded, but more than that, it is complete. It is complete in a way that only the final song on a concept album about life could be. Yet even as the final curtain of an epic melodrama, it is vague. There are no clear statements about God or Heaven or a lack thereof. All we are left with is the singular statement that “everything under the sun is in tune when the sun is eclipsed by the moon” before fading to the sound of a heartbeat and the very subtle spoken “there is no dark side of the moon, really, as a matter of fact it’s all dark”. It is as vague and unknowing as knowledge of an afterlife itself. Therefore, while the full piece is a final exclamation point at the end of an amazing sentence, it is also an ellipse that trails off only to be finished by one’s own psyche. Regardless of what one believes about an afterlife, about Heaven or Hell, about reincarnation, or about nothing at all, the only truth we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that we don’t know. There is no definitive answer. There is only a mysterious unexplored question mark.
Sidebar:
yes, I have seen Dark Side of Oz, no, I am not impressed by it as it diminishes the power and significance of both Dark Side and The Wizard of Oz, so please stop asking me every time I say I like Pink Floyd.      

2) The End – The Beatles
                You knew it had to happen eventually. No list of songs is complete without the Beatles, and no list can be taken seriously if the Beatles are not in the top 5 at least once. And what a song to choose. While Eclipse may be a complete song, this is a complete ending in the truest sense of the word. It is the last (real) song on the last (real) album by the last (real) band that has had that much of a profound effect on humanity as the Beatles. Plus it is called The End, so there is that. Unfortunately, being an amazing band isn’t enough of a qualification to make the “Apocalypse mix” dream team, otherwise we would have seen appearance by The Rolling Stones, The Who, Neil Young, and Rebecca Black. Luckily the Beatles are the Beatles because they knew how to finish a career in style with what is probably the simplest yet most profound lesson on how to live life to the fullest. It is a message that can be embraced by just about any with a set of ears and a beating heart: “and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”. It is so easy. It is the lesson we should be teaching our children from birth. It is akin to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, but it is more powerful. “Do unto others” is hypothetical. It says we should treat others the way we want them to treat us, but it ends with that. There is no incentive. There is no payout. And there is no finale, but The End taps into the only thing that is important when we find ourselves on our deathbed. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, at the end of life, the most important thing to anyone with even an ounce of humanity is the love of family and friends. Not money. Not fame. Not recognition of a successful life. It is why survived family members are referred to as “loved ones”. It is why “I love you” is the last thing we say to a family member who is dying. We know it is what our families want to hear because it is all we want to hear. In the moment before our own final golden slumber, it is all that matters and the only way to achieve it is by loving others. That is a lesson that even Jesus can embrace even if it does come from a band that was more popular than Him.  

And the number 1 song to welcome back the Lord and savior:

1)   My Boyfriend’s Back – The Angels
                For anyone who has faced ridicule for their beliefs. For anyone who has been mocked for praying in public. For anyone who has ever had their faith subject to harassment by others, this is your anthem. It is perfect. While others may have had fun at the expense of you and your beliefs, you will get the last laugh when He returns and teaches everyone the ultimate lesson about faith and devotion. This song is the epitome of devotion and loyalty. If the Christian faith is to be believed, nothing spells golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in the clouds quite like unconditional faith. And while your mortal life may have been filled with Veruca Salts, Augustus Gloops, and Mike Teevees, if you follow His rules and remember what is really important, your elevator has no place to go but up. Anyone who has read the scriptures knows that God is a big believer in testing mortals. Whether it be sending the Israelites to wander the desert for 40 years, instructing Moses to build an arc, or letting Satan temp Jesus in the woods, our Father is a glutton for mind games, and the only way to come out the other side smelling like roses is to reaffirm your devotion to Him. The odds are not in our favor. The world is filled with temptation. Filled with sin. Filled with alluring traps designed to send us astray. And just as the final twist of the knife, God gave us the one thing that could really throw a wrench in the gears of a good life: He gave us a choice. We can choose evil over good. We can choose wrong over right. We have the freedom to abandon Yoda and follow the dark side. We have the freedom to join Darth Vader on the Death Star, and we don’t even have a hologram Obi Wan to remind us of the power of The Force. But God doesn’t accept that. If Christians got it right, God expects that we choose good over evil. He accepts must choose the righteous path over temptation, but it isn’t easy. Many of us fail, but there are a select few who remain devout despite all the odds. They are God’s chosen people. They are the real Jedi. And their day will come when Jesus returns to save them from the rest of the sinners and show us all the error of our ways. Hey-la, hey-la.      


I spent a lot of time thinking about this list, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to how much time and energy I have devoted to something else. I don’t know what will happen in the coming minutes, hours, days, months, or years. Neither do you. Neither does Harold Camping, Neither does anyone else. Camping has stated that the return of Jesus on May 21 is a “guarantee”. I am thrilled for him. I congratulate him on being able to pinpoint the time that his faith is ultimately questioned, but it is exactly that: his faith. If your faith tells you that the Jesus will return to judge us all, I encourage you to continue in that belief. If your faith tells you that the universe is in a constant state of rebirth and reformation, I embrace your right to have that faith. If your faith tells you that no greater power exists in the universe and we are a random collection of molecules, I raise a glass to you. As long as you remember that your faith is your faith, I applaud each and every one of you.

The biggest issue we run into when it comes to spirituality is when faith is treated as fact. Faith is not now nor will it ever be fact no matter how many billboards you buy or how much time you spend interpreting the scriptures, that is why it is called faith. I recall in time in college when I was having a discussion with my roommate’s devout sister about religion which was started because my computer’s screen saver at the time was a scrolling text that read “Thank God for Atheism”. I was a lot more clever in those days. I remember she said something to me that I will never forget. She was telling me about a friend of hers who is an Atheist. She gave him credit because “He doesn’t believe in God, but he can really back it up”, and I remember thinking “Why does he need to back it up?” At what point did our collective conscience decide that people needed to justify their beliefs? Why does a person simply saying “I don’t believe in God” render them a fraud if they can’t then rattle off factual information proving that he is right? Like it or not, Atheism is as much a religious belief as any other and deserves to be respected as much as any other.

 You are free and encouraged to have faith if it leads you to a better, more fulfilled life. People need faith in something, even if it is faith in nothing. But our challenge as a people is not to eliminate beliefs we do not share, it is to eliminate judgment of beliefs that we do not share. Faith is a beautiful thing, but it is also a dangerous thing. If acted upon in the wrong way, it can lead to war, terrorism, genocide, and a general feeling of superiority over others. There are billions of people in the world at this very moment. Each and every person has faith in something. It may be Jesus. It may be Buddha. It may be Muhammad. It may be Ke$ha. Everyone believes in something, and no faith is universal. No faith is better. No Faith is worse. No faith is more or less true than any other. I encourage you to keep faith in you hearts, in your minds, in your souls, and in everything you do, but mostly, I encourage you to keep your faiths sacred and keep them to yourselves.  

   

No Time Like The Present

There is no time like the present. An old adage made popular by, among others, my father whenever he exhaustively tried to make me clean my room, do my homework, or generally anything else requiring me to turn off The Simpsons and actively participate in a normal lifestyle (though in retrospect, I feel The Simpsons had a far more significant impact on the course of my life than geometric proofs ever could). While my father’s intent was to make me get off my ass and do something productive, the phrase itself has vastly more philosophical implications than I feel he appreciated at the time, or perhaps he did, he has always been a lot smarter than me. Regardless, I am pretty certain that the basic philosophic principles were probably not the first things on his mind when he looked at the disaster zone known as my childhood bedroom. There truly is no time like the present. Never before has and never again will the present moment ever exist. This moment, this one right here, is now the past, and it will never happen again. The same is true for this one, and this one, etc. etc. One can and will never truly know what the future brings, and once it has past the proverbial “now” it can only be studied as history. Every moment that has ever existed is unlike every other moment and will, upon passing, never exist as anything more than a memory in the minds of the beholder. There is no time like the present because the present is unlike any other time.

This is why the song “She Blinded Me With Science” represents everything that was awful about the 1980’s. It is easy to mock the 80’s. We’ve all done it. It is easy to look back at the music, the fashion, the lifestyles, the Flock of Seagulls and laugh at ridiculousness of the culture. The sheer volume of 1980’s themed parties I've attended, comedic sitcoms, and parodies showcasing the most mockable 80’s stereotypes is staggering. It is easy to mock the past because it was a time that was unlike any other time before it and it is unlike any other time that would follow. Except that it is exactly like every time that has ever come before and it is exactly like every time that would and will follow. “She Blinded Me With Science” isn’t actually bad, embarrassing, annoying etc, it is simply 1980’s, and it was the 1980’s that was bad, embarrassing, annoying etc. “She Blinded Me With Science” is nothing more than a carbon footprint of everything that was wrong with the 1980’s.

But the 1980’s is, in a lot of ways, exactly like 2010. The only thing that really changes is, when you break it down, our vernacular. The 1980’s was not ridiculous because it was the 1980s. Instead the 1980s is ridiculous because the culture of 2010 is distinctly not the 1980’s. 2010 has evolved into something different, and our retrospective viewing of past culture makes for good comedy. Even though 2010 is a much different cultural atmosphere than 1980, in reality culture itself has not changed much at all. It brings with it its own music, fashion, lifestyles, politics, conflicts, and trends. While cultural high and low watermarks always vary, the concept of culture itself never will. Culture is constant, and culture is constantly changing.

Recently a close friend suggested that I download a particular current song which had been described to her as both “blazin” and “ballin.” My response was something to the effect of “I am pretty sure referring to a song as ‘blazin’ now is kind of like referring to a song as ‘rad’ in 1985.”

At the time this response was meant as a humorous way to impress the young lady by showcasing my rapier wit whilst deflecting a promise to listen to it without being insulting, but in the cold light of the next morning I started to actually think about my statement in the cultural sense, and realized that the implications of it extend far beyond just comic gold.

In case you weren’t aware, 2010 is the present year, but at one point in time, 1985 was the present. And, as we have already covered there is no time like the present, and that present had a distinct culture which was “rad” (for clarity’s sake, let’s assume “rad” is an abbreviation for radical even though much of the cultural advances of the time period could hardly be considered radical with a capital “R”). Much of the music in the 1980’s was rad because rad was the style. “She Blinded me With Science,” Bon Jovi’s “Livin on a Prayer,” Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” Van Halen’s “Jump” all songs that could be and likely were described as rad in the 1980’s, but are no longer described as rad today. We, as a society, no longer say the word rad as a synonym of cool, good, entertaining, and/or emotionally relevant. The problem is that the songs are still rad. They will always be rad. From the moment they were recorded until the moment the final copy of the final recording is destroyed, those songs are rad. Always and forever rad. The fact that the cultural vernacular has changed has exactly zero effect on the historical significance of popular music.

Music is defined by culture, and, in many ways, culture is defined by music. Much of the music of the 1980’s was rad because the culture of the 1980’s was rad. The culture has changed over time, but the rad music has not. While every single day we as a society evolve into something new, recorded media never does. Recorded media literally cannot change. As soon as a song or a film or a television show is recorded with the ability for playback, it has a timestamp of that moment of that day of that year in history that does not change, and with it comes a veritable cornucopia of background information about culture, about art, about politics, about life in that era. Music and video is the closest thing we have to an ever-running time capsule of American culture. Recorded music of the 1980’s was not a reflection of how people made bad music for an era, music of the 1980’s was a reflection of the 1980’s. Just as Dark Side of The Moon was a reflection of the late 1970’s. Just as Nevermind was a reflection of the early 1990’s. Just as Justin Timberlake’s Justified was a reflection of the culture of the new millennium. Once recorded, the music never changes. It is constant. It does not age like fine wine, it remains the exact same age for its entire existence like Dick Clark. If recorded in the rad 1985 culture with the rad 1985 timestamp, it will remain rad unaltered for the rest of time even while culture is no longer rad. Born rad, live rad, die rad.

The same is true for any style of music. The cultural timeline is not unlike variants on musical genres. Over time the genres don’t change, only the culture surrounding them which, by extension, influence our taste in music. Put another way: music that was popular in 1985 was rad. Music that is popular now is ballin or blazin, music that was popular when I was in college was tight, clutch, or solid (though to be fair, it is possible these terms only existed within one dorm at Elon University). The only thing that really changes over time is vernacular, slang, or colloquial speech. So, by describing a song as ballin now is exactly like describing a song as tight in 2003, which is exactly like describing a song as rad in 1985 because we aren’t actually talking about the music itself, we are talking about the cultural atmosphere from which the song was created and in which the song exists. In reality Ballin, while masquerading as a slang term describing the emotional state of the listener upon hearing the song, is really more like a one-word description for exactly what a song sounds like because ballin only exists in the here and now. By telling me a song is ballin, I can, within spitting distance, imagine what the song will sound like, the style, the beat, the indescribable tone of the music, and so can you. Just like if I were to tell you a song was rad, even without knowing it, you would know exactly what I was describing. It is not that ballin or rad are styles of music, it is that ballin is today’s rad, and it doesn’t take much to figure out what is popular now, and rad is 1980’s ballin with its own inherent qualities and traits. Even though the traits are ever changing and the language is constantly evolving, the concept remains constant. Different cultural periods plant their mark on history with their own unique vernacular reflective of the cultural experience.

The humor is in progressive foresight. It is easy to laugh at rad music, and most people who listen to ballin music often do. It is considered funny, it is considered annoying, and it is certainly considered cheesy, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that before long, the world will no longer be ballin. And before long it will be easy to laugh at ballin music because ballin will go the way of the dodo. We will look back and question our own reasoning for ever listening to ballin music. While Kanye West believes himself to be a ballin cultural icon who is the voice of a generation, he will ultimately exist as little more than a footnote on the culture of the first decade of the 21st century just as “She Blinded Me With Science” exists as little more than a footnote on the culture of the early 1980’s. In reality, rad and ballin are not similar, but instead they are exactly the same thing at different points on the cultural timeline. They are simply the terms that culture has given for their respective places and times. There is no knowing what the next style will be, but it will undoubtedly emerge as culture continues to evolve, but no matter what it is, it will fall right in line with rad and ballin and will be a response to its respective cultural trends. And we will look back and laugh at ridiculousness of past music just as we do now because that was the past and there is no time like the present. Laughing at changing culture is part of who we are. Culture is constant, and culture is constantly changing.

Musicians like to wax philosophical about how they create new and original music with every recording they make and how they are going to single-handedly revolutionize the future of music and, by extension, culture (see any tweet by @kanyewest for examples), but they are wrong, dead wrong. They don’t realize, or at least they don’t want to recognize, that the music they make is merely a reflection of the world around them. And in a very Ken Keseyan sense, this means that music is actually a step behind culture rather than an influencer of culture. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, with the help of enough LSD to fry the brains of every man woman and child in the enlightened world, developed their own concept of the natural time-lapse: the idea that there is no such reality of being in sync with the world around you. For every moment one exists, for every word that is spoken, for every sight that is seen, there is an inherent delay between its occurrence and one’s own cognitive processing and reaction. Therefore none of us are every instantly in tune with the world around us. It is impossible. This is what the infamous “Acid Tests” were all about: a way to make everyone, at any given time “tuned in” to the world around them so that everyone can experience the world in real time with no lapse while consequently also being in full control of one’s own experience and destiny. Like I said, a lot of LSD was required.

The creation of music works the same way. It is not necessarily a driving force free of influence that evolves culture, but rather it is a cultural sponge that absorbs abstract culture and translates it to a concrete recording. There is an inherent and inescapable lapse between cultural influence and the translation to the musical end product. This is certainly not to say music can’t be revolutionary. Quite the opposite in fact as music has a tendency to absorb culture and respond to it in a way that no one ever has and can then act as a powerful source to further the cultural experience. It is, however, a way of saying that music, and all art, is created as a reaction to the cultural status quo. Granted, music can have an enormous influence on future culture (a la The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Justin Bieber, et al), but that occurs after music has been produced, and it is always originally produced as a response to status quo. Hence, music is reactionary before being visionary. In other words, before the world was captivated by “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the song had to be written and recorded, and it couldn’t be written and recorded without the influence of the surrounding world. While it, as a musically artistic cornerstone, shaped the culture of 1964, it required the cultural landscape of 1963 in order to be created.

There really is no time like the present because the present is always new. It is not the memories of the past and it is not the mysteries of the future. It is right here, right now, and it is wholly unique. While it is connected to the past like a series of falling dominos, it is always a new experience devoid of the reasoning and analysis that is so valuable while studying past events. While the present draws a direct line to the future, it lacks the intrigue and ambiguity of the unknown. While it may not be the best time, it is certainly not the worst time, and no matter what is on the horizon or what roads we have travelled, the present is always a fresh experience unlike any other. This is the reason current music is always going to be more popular than past music. While it will not necessarily have the same staying power, and while it may not remain popular over time, and while it may not have the cultural impact of the past, current music is new, current music is fresh, current music is ballin just as current music isn’t rad, current music is present music, and there is no time like the present.

The Times They Are A-Changing... Sort Of


I am in love. I am in love with the most repulsive, most vile, most arrogant, most self-righteously shallow people who have ever appeared on television. Adultery, alcoholism, back-stabbing, blatant disregard for basic human decency: these are the things that make my heart swoon when I lose myself in the cool blue glow of my living room television set every night. I can’t help myself. I have become one with these characters, and despite their failings, I am their family. They are my brethren, and they can do no wrong. I can’t help but sympathize with them. I can’t help but want to reach out and console these people. I can’t help but long to let them know that everything is going to work out in the end. My love is unconditional. No matter how revolting or how despicable or how egotistical these people get I will still be there with my arms and heart and soul wide open longing for their tender embrace. I love them. And so does everyone else.

In 2008 when Mad Men emerged onto the scene and won Golden Globes for Best Drama Series and Best Actor and Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing among others, my reaction was simple: “Wow, good for them, but what the hell is this show?” I simply knew nothing about it as I don’t often pay much attention to a television series on AMC, but it didn’t take me long to become hopelessly immersed in all things Mad Men and equally enthralled by the lascivious nature of the series. It is as though out of nowhere came this show that blew the roof off of the antiquated concept of the Dick Van Dyke or Mr. Ed versions of the middle of the 20th century where nothing really goes wrong and no one really gets hurt no matter how many times Van Dyke trips over the ottoman in his living room. Mad Men reminded us that while chain-smoking Luckys in the comedy writer’s room, it would have been realistically feasible for Rob Petrie to be cheating on Mary Tyler Moore with Sally Rogers while Wilbur sells Mr. Ed to the glue factory when times get tough.

The 1980’s version of the 1960’s was about Kevin Arnold coming of age in a tumultuous time known as The Wonder Years. Though Kevin was a suburban junior high/high school student living at home for the duration of the series the time period of the late 60’s and Kevin’s life were never mutually exclusive. Kevin, Wayne, Winnie, Paul, and everyone else in The Wonder Years were an inescapable product of their surroundings and acted as a microcosm of the affects of Vietnam, Nixon, Woodstock, civil rights, and Sgt Pepper getting high with a little help from his friends. Anything really bad that happened on the show (which nothing really ever did short of the pilot episode where Winnie’s brother was killed in Vietnam) was easy to justify because 1) it was kids being kids 2) the show was designed as a retrospective look at a previous period of life as narrated by Daniel Stern and 3) all the characters and situations were themselves victims of the outside world. The show was more of a critique of the affect of the outside world on suburban adolescence and the blossoming of culture along with the blossoming of the new youth generation. The Wonder Years was, more than anything else, an examination of the innocent and, by extension, ignorant youth in the turbulent, often enlightened world. Kevin, Wayne, Paul, and Winnie were Michael, Sonny, Tom Hagen, and Kay Adams respectively in the rough and tumble world of the Corleone family.

Mad Men is different. Mad Men doesn’t have the excuse of being “of the time” even though it is. It doesn’t have the excuse of offering itself as a portrayal of men who are affected by a changing world, even though they are. It doesn’t have the excuse of fictitiously portraying fictional characters and hypothetical situations even though it does. Mad Men isn’t about men in the jungles of Nam fighting a losing battle for their country. It is not about stoned hippies tuning in, turning on, or dropping out in the mud of upstate New York, and it is not about political insiders in DC as so many productions about the 1960's are. It is not about a budding culture of an evolving world or a retrospective glance at a fascinating cultural time and place. It is about men and women in an office building working for an ad agency in New York City. The way the show is produced, the outside environment has little or no affect on the inner-office life (apart from three subplots about the 1960 presidential election, the death of Marilyn Monroe, and the assassination of JFK respectively). In fact, because they are an ad agency responsible for designing, building, and selling the products that defined the time, they are responsible for impacting American culture by feeding on what the world wants and exploiting it. They are not products of the 1960’s, they are the 1960’s. And that 1960’s is one devious world.

The men on the show are truly appalling people. Chain-smoking and rampant alcoholism aside, the men are guilty of extramarital affairs, racism, homophobia, and antisemitism, but not in a devious detached sense, nor in a villainous antagonizing way, but rather in a very real, accepted, protagonist fashion. The cheating, racist, homophobic, anti-Semites are not the evil flawed rogues who were given these traits for audiences to hate, but instead they are made to be the classically cool and sophisticated central protagonists who audiences are meant to love and envy. These men are not the Grinches who stole Christmas as we should consciously think of them. They are the cool-hand Lukes, they are the James Bonds, the Han Solos, the James Deans, the George Cloonys of the world. They are the coolest guys on the planet except that they are the most repulsive men imaginable. They are the guys everyone wants to be even though they are the guys that no one would actively associate with. As much as we like to look at them as cool and sophisticated, they are in actuality shallow and socially vile by any of today’s standards. But loving them is excusable, because the times they are a-changing, and time heals all wounds.

It is acceptable to love the characters in Mad Men because we have evolved as a society, right? We no longer think, act, or live the way Don and Roger do, right? We no longer live with the same sinister mentality as was commonplace in 1960, right? We are enlightened, right? Times have changed, right? Wrong.

The characters of Mad Men are not Frank, Dean, and the Rat Pack. The cast of Mad Men are really nothing more than The Situation, Paulie D and the cast of Jersey Shore.

While Mad Men has been critically acclaimed across the board and honored by virtually every English-speaking television authority on the planet since its inception, Jersey Shore has survived a polar opposite fate, and has established itself as a cultural low-water mark by every source that has crossed paths with it. Jersey Shore has become the butt of late-night jokes, fodder for internet comedy, a dark premonition for all parents of young adult children, and has even specifically been targeted by the Governor of New Jersey. But despite being viewed as a joke within itself and an abysmal display of a severe lack of human decency, Jersey Shore remains hugely popular among America’s youth for the exact same reasons that Mad Men remains popular among affluent intellectuals.

While Mad Men is darkly sophisticated, cerebral, and intellectually taut and a brilliant critique of modern man, Jersey Shore is base, vulgar and exploits the absolute worst of youth culture. Jersey Shore is the local strip club to Mad Men’s Metropolitan Opera House. Kanye West to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Teen Beat to Time Magazine. McDonald's to Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Starbucks to good coffee. Everything that is great about Mad Men only further illustrates that which is disgusting about Jersey Shore. Yet the similarities of the two shows are hauntingly similar. Scripted television versus “reality” television aside, both represent the worst of American culture. Both rely on the dark nature of mankind. Both highlight the self-centered, egotistical, shallowness of humanity, and both stand as televised cornerstones for their respective demographics.

More haunting yet, the characters of each show are striking parallel. Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino with his leadership role despite his total lack of disregard to anyone but himself and his own success is really Roger Sterling. Snookie, the easily mocked break-out success within the show’s own reality, is really Peggy Olsen. JWoww, a strong independent woman who has no hesitation standing up to anyone regardless of consequence, is really Joan Holloway. Paulie D, consciously stylish and highly respected among the rest of the group despite his constantly answering to The Situation, is really Don Draper. Sammie, an attractive and sought after yet emotionally driven young woman with a penchant for stirring up conflict when circumstances don’t suit her, is really Betty Draper. Vinnie, with his seemingly clean-cut, intelligent, and charming exterior but who has a seedy dark side and who doesn’t appear to belong with the rest of the group, is really Ken Cosgrove. Angelina, the least respected of the group despite her naive and childish ambitions and total lack of hesitation to sell-out anyone and everyone for her own benefit, is really Pete Campbell, though I am not sure if that is a bigger insult to her or to Pete. I have a difficult time placing Ronnie in the Sterling Cooper clique, but that is mostly because I can’t get a sense of Ronnie beyond his natural ability to grossly over-compensate for his own insecurities with arrogance and thinly veiled romantic desires which I suppose makes him like Sal Romano.

As a character analysis, Jersey Shore is really Mad Men mixed with alcohol, debauchery, and an almost Godly sense of pride except that Mad Men already has alcohol, debauchery, and an almost Godly sense of pride. Jersey Shore really is Mad Men and Mad Men really is Jersey Shore. The only real difference between the two, again, apart from scripted versus “unscripted,” is that those who love Mad Men also love to hate Jersey Shore and probably vice versa. And in a rather ironic twist of fate, those who hate Jersey Shore will continue to hate it for the exact same reasons they love Mad Men. The differences are not the two shows, the differences are us, the audiences. The difference is that television that is about a destructive, disgusting, and socially challenging society from the past is only considered brilliant whereas television about a destructive, disgusting, and socially challenging society happening in the present is considered exploitation the inevitable moral decay in the fabric of American youth culture. Time makes all the difference, and time heals all wounds.

We approach the 1960’s with a certain level of learned understanding. We knew it was a troubled time, but we also like to think that it was a simpler time. The world outside was filled with unmitigated chaos with no end in sight, but the home life was dinner on the table at 6:00, manicured front lawns, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and father always knows best. Even if we consciously know none of that is true, we still like to think of it that way. Mad Men is one of those rare shows that takes a look back at a time we thought we understood and plays Chinese ping pong with our emotions and veiled understanding. It is like the first time a 12 year old boy discovers that professional wrestling is staged; for years we believed what we saw, and we don’t like to accept our own gullibility for a false sense of reality, but as time goes on we realize that the reality is vastly more logical than the preferred fantasy. This is one of the reasons why Mad Men is so brilliant. Nothing is more intriguing than a glimpse into realism that challenges our previous perception of the past. But no matter what happens in the world of Sterling Cooper, it was the past. No matter how offensive we find it, we are naturally detached from it. No matter how vile and immoral Don Draper, Roger Sterling, and Pete Campbell appear to be, we are separated from them by 50 years so we are able to justify loving them. The times they are a-changing, and time heals all wounds.

But Jersey Shore is not the past. Jersey Shore is the present. Jersey Shore does not give us a detached glimpse into the reality of a time previously misunderstood, it instead shows us the reality of the immediate offensive present. Mad Men reminds us of how far we have come as a society, but Jersey Shore highlights our current social failings. The only problem is that when broken down to its fundamental base, we are forced to see that in reality not much really has changed. Alcoholism, womanizing, immoral behavior, violence, and general unmitigated debauchery are all phrases that perfectly describe Jersey Shore, and they are all phrases that perfectly describe Mad Men, just as they are all phrases that perfectly describe early 1960’s culture as well as perfectly describing current youth culture. The times really aren’t a-changing, and time has healed no wounds.

Yet, even though they are both vile displays of American culture, they are still loved equally by their respective demographics. It is perfectly acceptable to hate Jersey Shore as it is also perfectly acceptable to hate Mad Men. But it has become common to love Jersey Shore and it is almost expected that everyone love Mad Men. Most who have never fully immersed themselves in it probably do hate Jersey Shore just as those who have not fully immersed themselves in Mad Men feel the same way, but that is what makes these two shows challenging in their own right. Neither show would exist without the human element which is to say the success, and by extension, the existence of both shows is reliant, not only on the exploitation of their vices, but on the illustration of their humanity. From afar, it is easy to look at Don Draper as a one-dimensional character who cheats on his wife and spends his professional life duping the general public into buying products they don’t need, just as it is easy to look at Snookie as a dumb girl who only cares about drinking, clubbing, and picking up men. But television doesn’t work that way. Literature doesn’t work that way. Art doesn’t work that way. There is nothing intriguing about characters that lack depth. There is nothing interesting about watching a show with no arc. And there is certainly nothing compelling about characters for whom an audience has no sympathy. If we wanted that we would still be watching reruns of Cavemen and Theodore Rex would have swept the Oscars in 1996.

There was a moment in each show that captivated their respective audiences and earned them a place in television history; Don Draper’s Kodak Carousel pitch, and Snookie getting punched in the face by a drunk frat guy.

After 12 episodes of watching Don Draper parade around his own immoral private Idaho with little concern about the consequences of his actions on the people around him, and almost no display of the overt humanity we have come to expect from television shows masquerading as more intellectual than they are, he was presented with a new account for the Kodak Wheel. His pitch for the new product was nothing short of brilliant, and it reads as follows:


In Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards, takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel. It’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Round and around, and back home again. To a place where we know we are loved.
All while giving this pitch Don is flipping through slides of himself with his wife and his children. It is easy to say that Don is nothing more than a salesman who knows how to sell a product with a select choice of words, but the reality is that Don wasn’t selling a product; Don was selling an emotion, a feeling, a memory, a sense of humanity because Don Draper is human. Don Draper is not a scoundrel being portrayed by Jon Hamm to the tune of a couple Screen Actors Guild awards, a Golden Globe, and a bevy of additional acting award nominations. Don Draper is humanity, not just human, but humanity. A man who spends the bulk of his time hiding his human insecurities, secrets, and weaknesses while living a sordid egocentric lifestyle until a minuscule glimmer of warmth from a yet extinguished candle lights the way in an otherwise dark cave. Don Draper doesn’t sell a slide projector; Don Draper sells his own pain. Don Draper was metaphorically punched in the face while the world watched him weep, and Kodak bought it, Sterling Cooper bought it, and television audiences bought it.

Snookie, on the other hand, was literally punched in the face and literally wept while the world watched which, like Don Draper, illustrates her own humanity. For 4 episodes, Jersey Shore was little more than a display of shallow self-righteousness from a group of easily ridiculed 20-somethings who seemed to care only about where they were getting drunk and who they were sleeping with next. They were fake, they were plastic, they were one-dimensional. The cast of Jersey Shore was in no way reflections of accepted society until the end of episode 5 when an anonymous drunk guy purposely hauled off and hit a 4’9” Italian girl in the face over a dispute for some shots of liquor while cameras were rolling. The punch heard round the world. Suddenly the show was not about fist pumps, beating the beat, GTL, or grenades. The show was about the sudden display of compassion we had for these characters who had seemed so shallow and invincible. Through Snookie’s pain, we saw Snookie’s humanity and we sympathized. Snookie’s greatest achievement was not that she sold her wild lifestyle to MTV, instead she sold her full range of emotions to the country, and we bought it.

The simple-minded sects of society would say the only selling point for the two shows is that they sell sex as that old cliche is a commonly understood television principle. But the truth about Jersey Shore and Mad Men is that they do not sell sex, alcohol, and debauchery because, contrary to popular belief, that is not what has ultimate selling power. What's more, that theory has been disproved time and time again: Law and Order, The West Wing, Meet The Press, The Simpsons, Jeopardy, Spongebob Squarepants, all shows with enormous followings that have little or nothing to do with sex of any kind. Certainly those vices capture the attention from audiences, but only a limited amount of footage from bars, nightclubs, and hot tubs can keep audiences interested. Just as audiences will only remain intrigued by a retrospective look at the past for so long. Great television is not about racy situations, great television is about characters. And characters need to be complex. They need to have depth. They need to have emotions that contradict our initial impressions of them. In Don Drapers own word: “You are the product. You feeling something, that’s what sells. Not them, not sex.” This has been true throughout the history of film and television. As sure as the sun sets in the West, and as sure as there will always be an English empire, film and television needs provocative characters. The times they aren’t a-changing, and time heals no wounds.

The Birds, The Bees, and Everyone Else


A parable: two guys walk into a bar. It is an ordinary bar with ordinary run of the mill people. Nothing special, nothing fancy, just a place to go and enjoy yourself with the surrounding company and atmosphere. The men are nice looking, well-dressed, well-groomed, dignified; not flashy, but not dingy either. They casually walk up to the bar to order their first round.
“Bartender, we’d like to order two cognacs, please” says the first man
The bartender takes a moment to look at them, smiles a little half smile then almost undetectably shakes his head as he turns to prepare their order. Upon returning to the two men, the bartender serves them two bottles of Bud Light.
“Excuse me, sir” says the first man “this is not what we ordered. We ordered two cognacs”
The bartender, a little taken aback, looks at him and his partner and says “Oh, I’m sorry, but we can’t serve you cognac, we can only serve you this” motioning to the bottles in front of the men.
The men then turn to observe the other bar patrons as the bartender goes about his business. They assume the bar is simply out of cognac, but remain confused as to why Bud Light was the instinctual second choice. Almost immediately, they see a man and a woman sitting at a table nearby slowly sipping on glasses of cognac as they chat with each other.
The second man motions to the bartender and asks “excuse me, it looks to me like those two over there” motioning to the couple at the table “are drinking cognac. I don’t mean to pry, but did they happen to get the last of it?”
The bartender again smiles a half smile and says “oh no, we have lots of that here, it is one of our more popular drinks, so we pretty much have an unlimited stock of several varieties.”
Second man then responds rather abruptly “well, now I really don’t understand, we ordered cognac, exactly like they are drinking, twice, and you explicitly told us you couldn’t serve it. So do you have any or not?”
Bartender says “yes, we have lots of cognac, but like I said I can’t serve it to you”
Looking rather insulted, but still patient for a logical explanation, the first man asks “well would you mind telling us why you can’t serve it to us?”
The bartender, sensing the men’s growing aggravation gets very serious and looks the first man in the face and says “ok, well it is pretty simple: those two over there are a man and a woman so I can serve them whatever they like. You two, however, are two men, and I can’t serve you cognac, but as a consolation I can serve you Bid Light. Do you know what I mean?”
The first man snaps back and says “Frankly, no, I don’t understand. What the hell is so special about the two of them that they can drink what they want, and we have to drink what you choose to allow us to drink?”
The bartender, not wishing to upset the men further tries to console them “Gentlemen, I am very sorry, I understand you would like cognac, but Bud Light will get you drunk too, so how about we make all of our lives a little easier and just enjoy your beer, after all the end result is the same.”
The second man, unimpressed with this response, inquires further “explain to me again why we can’t have what we ordered; I am still not understanding”
“Ok, it is like this” The bartender says becoming exasperated himself “If I serve you the same thing as those two, it cheapens the drink. Cognac is a classy drink and it is my responsibility to make sure it stays that way, but if I serve it to you it takes away from the quality of the drink as a whole and effectively keeps those two from feeling the stateliness they feel by drinking it.”
Proud of his articulate answer the bartender turns to go back to work when he is stopped by the second man again.
“So, because they are a man and a woman, they are allowed to drink it, but because we are two men, we can’t because of the value of the drink itself?”
“That’s right” says the bartender frankly “because if I serve it to you, I don’t know who else will end up drinking it; maybe kids, maybe animals, who knows where it will end up?”
“Well I don’t think that is very fair. I mean we are two grown men, we are citizens of this country, we have jobs, we pay our taxes, what is the difference?”
Wishing to appease the two men the bartender comes to a compromise “alright, how about this: I will take a quick poll of everyone in the bar tonight to see how they feel about you two drinking cognac? Does that sound fair?”

Every so often a political issue sweeps across the landscape of American popular culture that polarizes the nation with inexplicable force for inexplicable reasons. Supreme Court justices? Social Security benefits? The deficit? Gun control? None of these hold a candle to the firestorm that is the gay marriage debate. The gay marriage debate has set water-coolers boiling across the nation in the course of the last four years. It has caused turkeys, stuffing, and most-likely silverware to be hurled in frustration at Thanksgiving dinners. It has even been partly responsible for breaking-up heterosexual relationships. It is a debate that has recently taken center-stage on this country and has left its mark on every office, every home, and every school from Maine to California, and now, this blog. Let us reflect and refract as necessary.

On a personal note, I swore I would never write an article about a political issue, and in a sense, I am keeping with that promise. Every so often a political issue emerges from the woodwork that is so fraught with controversy it transcends political and social culture to become popular culture. Popular culture in the respect that it becomes a conversation piece for virtually every sect of the mass population from the obvious homosexuals to heterosexuals, from Democrats to Republicans, from students to teachers, young and old, rich and poor, every race, every creed, every one has an opinion. It is one of the few issues where it is simply impossible to not have an opinion. This is not to say that everyone thinks about gay marriage every moment of the day. In fact I suspect anyone who thinks of it or any single issue every moment of the day is critically insane. But gay marriage has been so widely reported and so widely discussed over the past four years that it is difficult to imagine anyone not having an opinion.

If you happen to be someone who voluntarily entered the Theodore Kaczynski life of luxury by shutting yourself out of society to build homemade "presents" and have somehow avoided the question, it is time to end your silence: how do you feel about the prospect of homosexuals gaining the right to marry and have their marriage recognized as equal to that of heterosexual marriage? It is simple. So simple that it is impossible to say “I don’t know” to this question. It is impossible to say “it depends” It is impossible to not know enough information to answer. It is so simple that it has to be popular culture because you don’t have to know anything to have an opinion. Either you feel that consenting homosexual adults should have the right to marry or you don’t. It couldn’t be simpler, and yet it has, as always, become far more complicated.

The debate is no longer about gay marriage, the debate is about you, it is about me, it is about “we the people,” and it is about the United States as a whole. Should there be a Constitutional law for or against it? What does gay marriage do to affect the institution of marriage? What does it do to families? Is a civil union the same thing? What does the Bible say? How would a bachelor party work? Now we have ourselves a complex debate, and complex debates are how relatively simple issues become convoluted so much that the core question no longer becomes recognized or even relevant, and the real issue becomes about two polarized stances. All of a sudden if you are in favor of gay marriage then it means you are against the Bible or you are against family values or you are against the natural order or you are in favor of pedophilia. If you are against gay marriage you are against freedom of choice or you are against love or you are against civil rights or you are for segregation. If you are opposed to gay marriage you must be a bigot and hate America. If you support gay marriage you must be gay and hate America. Gay marriage is no longer about gay marriage, gay marriage is about you and your relationship with America, and there is no right answer. But there is also no wrong answer. Everyone believes themselves to be right which means everyone else must be wrong. The debate is incredibly complex even though the debate is incredibly simple.

And the best part is this: the whole thing is utterly ridiculous, and before I die, I hope the rest of the country figures that out. In fact, I know the rest of the country will figure that out.

As I write this, the debate continues over California’s proposition 8 or the “California Marriage Protection Act” which would add to the California constitution a clause that only a marriage between a man and a woman will be recognized in the state effectively making marriage between same sex couples illegal. The act was voted for and passed in November 2008 until August 4, 2010 when Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned the act in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which is now currently pending appeal by the ninth circuit court of appeals. The amount of money spent on campaigns for and against prop 8 total $39.9 million and $43.3 million respectively as of the 2008 ballot initiative making it the highest funded campaign outside a presidential election. The debate has spawned commercial campaigns on both sides and even a mock musical. Did I say ridiculous? I meant completely insane. Let’s take a trip back, way back to a simpler time: 1920.

1920 was not that long ago. Fewer than 100 years. 12 years prior was the last time the Cubs won the World Series. Let me repeat that: 1908 was the last time, not the first time, but the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. In 1920 Hitler was on the rise, the US struck down the invitation to join the League of Nations which they had created, and Warren G. Harding was elected President. Something else happened that year: The nineteenth amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920 guaranteeing women the right to vote. Again, let me repeat: in this country, the United States of America, women were not given the right to vote in an election until 1920 whereas white men had been granted the right to vote since the Constitution was adapted in 1787. That doesn’t even include the pay equity act, the right to own property, or the still un-ratified equal rights amendment. Women were not and in many was still are not treated as equal to men in this country.

What about the period of time between 1955-1968 during the American civil rights movement? What about the fact that racial segregation in all public places was the law of the land until 1954, and even since African-Americans have continued to be treated as inferior citizens?

We look back now, or at least I hope we do, and consider our nation’s past mentality as ridiculous. How did we legally treat women as inferior? How did we legally segregate races? How did we ever consider “separate but equal” status humane? More than that, how did opposition to these issues exist? The darkest secret of all is that opposition did not only exist, but opposition was the majority mentality. A majority of Americans opposed integration. A majority of Americans opposed universal suffrage. A majority of Americans believed that certain races and a certain gender were inferior and were to be treated as such by law. We’ve come a long way, baby, but we still have many rivers to cross, and one of those rivers is rainbow-colored.

It is so simple. It is so simple it is ridiculous. It is so ridiculous that it must be the kind of debate reserved for only the most incendiary and provocative of public figures to spit mouths full of gasoline into an already burning fire of American society.

Believe it or not, but homosexuality is real. People really are homosexuals and homosexuals really are people. In this country we not only have the right, but we have the responsibility to treat everyone equally, and I am yet to see any evidence that a person’s sexuality makes them any less than deserving of all of the rights and privileges guaranteed by our United States Constitution. I am yet to hear a logical argument opposing gay marriage. Opponents like to say that the Bible calls homosexuality an abomination, but the Bible also says that a women were put on Earth to serve their husbands (Genesis 3:16) and that a woman shall be summarily executed if she is not a virgin when she weds (Deuteronomy 22:20), so something tells me the Bible isn’t too tolerant as far as marriages go. Some like to say that gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage, but with a current divorce rate of 40%, and with fairly recent highly rated television shows like “Rock of Love with Brett Michaels” and “Joe Millionaire,” heterosexual marriage is far from sanctified. Some will say that gay marriage is a threat to the American family and family values, but I have never once witnessed the actions of a neighbor affecting my or anyone else’s family structure except perhaps the affect of helping me realize how much I hate Hispanic music at 7am on a Saturday.

A popular argument is that a civil union is comparable to marriage and available for homosexuals as an alternative, but that is the biggest load of garbage yet. As soon as you tell a person that they aren’t suitable for one option, but are qualified for another with different rights and privileges, you are immediately classifying them as inferior. It is the same flawed reasoning behind the Jim Crow laws of the first half of the 20th Century. “Separate but equal” status is inherently flawed and imbalanced as was determined in Brown v. Board of Education more than 50 years ago in 1954. Telling anyone they can’t get married but can have a union as consolation is no different from telling a person they are inferior and are not deserving of the same rights as others. Nothing could be simpler. Nothing could be more ridiculous. Yet nothing could be more convoluted or skewed.

Homosexuals will be allowed to marry in every state in the United States. Gay marriage will be nationally recognized in this country in my life-time. This is a fact that I know for sure. I know this because we progress as a society. What may be debatable today will be an unquestionable way of life in the future. We evolve. We improve. We accept and we grow. Someday, somewhere, someone in the not too distant future will write a poignant piece about our next social hurdle and they will use the gay marriage debate to illustrate our turn of the century short-sightedness. They will cite the bible debate. They will cite the family values debate. They will cite the majority opposition. They will also cite the ridiculousness of the debate as a whole.

Will homosexuals be allowed to marry? Yes. Will they endure all the difficulties inherent with sharing one's life with another? Absolutely. Will a significant percentage of homosexuals who marry end up divorcing? Of course. But will an even greater percentage survive the hysteria and spend the rest of their lives in a loving caring relationship with all the rights and privileges given to them by this great nation of ours? Damn right. I know this because love is simple. And I know this because love is complicated.