drunk post

I was thinking, I am a student. By occupation, as much I like to ignore it, I am a student. And students, especially college students, form a well-educated, strong constituency. We are smart, we can vote, we arre at the point in our lives when we learn to think for ourselves (don't tell me you didn't se e Dead Poets' Society). We influence national trends, we influence the high schoolers nationwide coming after us.

Here is NYU, this gigantic institution that rides entirely on our backs. Wihtout us, NYU wouldn't exist. But with financial aid, film insurance, admission, housing, work-study, classes, even laundry (goddamned Fordham gets free laundry), NYU is a university that doesn't look out for its fucking students. And all we do is complain to eachother, never to the people that can do something. So many people leave NYU discontented and bitter towards their shitty experience with the school. Why are we so apathetic?

And i may be silly drunk right now, as witnessed bythe deteriorating typing, but this isn't fair. Students used to band together and now, it's what? To each his own?

This is, like, just wrong.

Much of what I know of Asher Roth comes from the private sector. But as his career expands, I now face the predicament of having to come to terms with Asher Roth, the New White Rapper. For some time now, I've been frequently updated on the happenings of his burgeoning career, but most of it floated under the radar of my giving a shit, because to me, he was just some middle class, suburban white kid from Westchester, PA. Who was trying to make a name for himself in hip-hop. Um...yeah. At least Eminem came from Detroit's ghetto.

Recently, he was part of XXL's Freshmen 10, the blossoming new artists hitting the hip-hop scene. A grassroots movement, led by his friends, formed to push his single, "I Love College", to the top of the iTunes chart. I think he made it as far as #3, fell down to #10 and has been steadily climbing up again.

The single now stands at #6 and now, New York Magazine, my personal Bible, published this article, "Asher Roth Disgusts, Impresses in Equal Measure". My God. I'm imagining scores of New York elite teenagers gathering around the Mandarin Oriental pool, chanting 'I love college!' The horror.

And with this single, Asher has successfully established his outfits for the next few months, that really obnoxious "COLLEGE" shirt. What irritates me the most about him isn't that he's white, which seems to be the main focal point for the media. It isn't his background and it isn't the stupid chorus of that really stupid song. What bothers me most is that I have heard his other material and, perhaps surprisingly, it's good.

I might even go so far as to say it's really good. "I Love College" samples John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change", which I immediately considered an affront to hip-hop. Then I heard a track that also sampled that song, but the lyrics were complex, inspiring and related to the original song. I just don't feel like this is a guy who's embarking on a career that's meant for him; this is a guy who is being sold to insipid college students, being marketed for what his label would like him to be. I think Asher has much more potential than I'd like to give him credit for, and more importantly, than he gives himself credit for.

But it still stands that his first single is called "I Love College" and come fucking on...Have some balls, Roth.

Seriously, Americans need to chill.

The battle between the rich and the poor, the ruling and the ruled: the Showdown in... Connecticut!!
...oh.







I just found this article on New York Times, about the A.I.G. executives...

The Connecticut Working Families' Party is planning a bus tour of executives' homes. This behavior is just appalling. Wilton, CT is at the center of the A.I.G. bonus controversy and now that I think about it, this is so what angry white people would do. It's absurd. People are taking time out of their day to go sit at executives' homes to wait for them to come home and then yell at them. And let's not forget, we still don't know who even got the bonuses.

The guy running the bus tour said that his goal is to "...give folks in Bridgeport and Hartford and other parts of Connecticut who are struggling and losing their homes and their jobs and their health insurance an opportunity to see what kinds of lifestyle billions of dollars in credit-default swaps can buy." Are. You. Serious. So, c'mon guys, let's all go wallow in self pity and lament all the things we don't have, this will be fun. The sanity of New England upper crust is clearly crumbling.

Look, these executives, I agree, should not receive those bonuses. But on the flip side, imagine if that were your job. If you had watched your company disintegrate like that, um, you'd probably not want to stay there. You probably would have needed some convincing. If you were to stick to your principles, that would mean changing your life completely, because there remain few financial powerhouses for you to work at. And, one night, while imagining your children having to give up what they have, you decide to screw your principles. Because what's $6 million out of $170 billion?

Give them a fucking break. They are stupid, middle-aged men who are consumed by luxury and/or greed. But they are still men with families, men with basic human flaws. They are not infallible, none of us are. In a different world, the CT Working Families could have been the ones on top. Let the government take care of it.

You are wasting your fucking time touring their homes and bemoaning what you do not have; this gets nothing done. Looking at Mrs. Executive's Chanel collection does not mean you win it because you weren't lucky enough to marry money. Pointing out CEO #1's pool means nothing except you are a pretty bitter person.

Please, people, keep in mind that everyone is suffering. Consider doing something more proactive with your time. Bake cookies for your children. Instead of hosting a bus tour of gated suburban communities, I mean, Angelina Jolie gets paid $20 million a movie, why don't we get tours of her obscenely large mansion(s)? Instead of making death threats to a few men who have very little to do with your life, call the PTA to bitch out the teacher that keeps giving your kid B-'s. Go back to your old ways and go back to being nervous white people who don't talk to one another.

Besides, when rich people get scared of angry poor/screwed over people, they hire security. And that security costs even more money, being paid for by the corporations, which are being sustained by taxpayers' money. Poor/screwed people being actively angry just wastes everybody's time. Stop acting like children, forgive these insensitive men and go on with your fucking day.

Deal with the problems you have. Stop whining.

I'm going to talk about me. You should listen.

You know, I do try to avoid writing too much personal stuff here and I realize I generally fail, because, well, I'm a bit self-obsessed. But this will be my last [ elaborate ] personal post (I suppose little life anecdotes are now assigned to Twitter), because I have something to say and I want to say it to anyone and everyone...okay.

I'm happy.

Like, for real. And I don't want to sound like I'm gloating and I don't want to shove it into anyone's face, but for me, realizing this today was such an unbelievable and inexpressible (yet I still try...) feeling. Maybe it's just growing up or maybe it's the recession doing some backwards trick on me. Sure as hell I don't know, but the ease I feel is such a relief and so welcomed, because this thing, life...well. I think I'm finally starting to maybe, sort of, get it.

Earlier this week, I found out that my parents cannot afford to send me back to NYU and will soon be leaving rent to me because they have lost just too much in the recession. That sucked. I mean, I had to face it, my upbringing took place in a very white rural-suburb of Connecticut, upper middle class, getting everything I pointed a finger at. So, naturally, I freaked the fuck out.

However, I recognize, though this blows, it is very, very, super far from the end of the world. In that, I changed, something I once thought I was incapable of doing and capable of preventing. Like, hey Ma, look! No dwelling!

High school was miserable, flying right into the first two years of living in the city, which were easily the worst two of my life. My friendships were shaky and merely convenient; relationships were unstable and manipulative. I remember thinking I had it all together, all the time, and then I found out, in fact, I didn't. The dreamy world I had created crashed all around me, my heart was broken and I was just another sad, angry person living in the city.

You get here and, all of the sudden, you're compounded with so much; so much to do, to see and most importantly, to be. There are so many options, so many fucking paths you can take. You move here, and it dawns on you that NYC, why, it can do fine without you, so you become obsessed with exactly who you need to be, here.

...The old you isn't important if you can materialize a new you out of some skinny jeans, plaid flannel and Frye boots, right? That fucks with your head.

Had this week taken place a year ago, it would have been the most pathetic displays of self pity Crown Heights has ever seen. Luckily, I've found out that there's a very good reason the very corny phrase "Life is what you make it" is printed on refrigerator magnets everywhere.

Remember what I said before about life and "getting it"? Well, I mean, I don't. Which, I think, is part of it. No one knows what's coming, whether this economy will pick up or whether Chris Brown and Rihanna are actually going to record that stupid couples-overcoming-obstacles single (ugh, don't even...). All I have control over is myself and what I choose to do. And quite frankly, I'm a lot to handle; as, I'm sure, you are, too.

The upcoming months are going to be unpredictable (speaking of, Gossip Girl?!) and weird. But underneath it all, I am deeply happy and prepared, as much as I can be, with whatever happens. I guess, I'm upset, but I'm perfectly okay with being upset. You can be old and new, laugh and cry; whatever, just keep moving. It's simply a part of what happens. Keep an even keel and make lemonade.

As I was dancing to AC/DC on the subway, I looked around and saw everyone staring straight ahead. They were probably doing okay, but the image stayed in my head. Later in the day, on another subway, I realized that I want everyone else to feel this, too. Whether I'm working on a new project, dancing on the subway or sitting here, smoking a j with the Roommate, there are constant little moments that feel, somehow, like the best in the world. I want everyone else to feel as certain and uncertain, as scared and as okay as I do right now.

Which, I'd like to think, says something in and of itself.


(ugh, finally, this bitch shut up, right?) Psych!

I just happen to be looking at an old journal, where one of the most talented and dearest of my friends wrote, "Laughter and tragedy co-exist, nigga'", summing up about everything I wanted to say (I'm starting to suspect he may also be one of the wisest, without even fully realizing it).

yeah,
onelove

This affects very few people but the majority of my friends.

Tisch has been dropped from its third party insurance plan, now forcing Tisch film students to have to purchase their own insurance.

The details on this are coming up, it's the principle of it that bothers me immensely. I'm pissed as shit at NYU, I just happen to be at work and can't write on it now.

In regards to Twitter, once again...

http://gawker.com/5168039/dude-turns-to-twitter-as-guy-breaks-in-his-house

Unbelievable! This is just pathetic, a little bit.

On Twitter...

I've been contemplating a switch over to WordPress, which, coupled with job switching and technology hating, has crippled my ability to write in a blog at all. But anyways, I'm too lazy to switch to WordPress, even though I love it. I'm not particularly interested in my new job besides the computer applications' perks and in regards to the use of Twitter ( you know, overexposure of information, faulty identities, endless vanity plays ) and other 'real-time' social technologies...

Look, I already have a hard time adapting to these new toys: my Twitter is lame, I don't like what most people have to say, I don't care what most people say, my RSS feeds never work the ways I'd like and, to be honest, I still prefer picking up the New York Times on the way to work, alongside a gritty, street-cart coffee. But times are a-fuckin'-changin', right? Was that not the entire foundation of the Obama campaign? So I don't fucking understand why the media needs to incessantly [at least, unabashingly] publish worthless articles, these masturbatory inquiries into the legitimacy, necessity and luxury of Twitter, Facebook and the like. Because it looks like they're here to stay and it's up to us to adapt.

My family used to have this monstrosity of an Apple computer, back when I was way young and I got my own PC when I was eight and my first laptop when I was fourteen. Maybe the media was bitching about AIM and LiveJournal back then too, but I was unbelievably and happily absorbed into those outlets of expression. Though I emerged from high school computer capable, there turned out to be a much bigger world of Internet networking I had never discovered, which shattered my internet saavyness to the shitter and I've been recovering ever since.

I don't like that my phone has more than 12 buttons; I do love that it has buttons. I like switches and wires and e-mail and the original Facebook format. I don't like Twitter and I do think that it is a nearly perfect storm for the endless reaches of human narcissism and the-sky's-the-limit self promotion. As Alessandra Stanley noted in her recent NYT article, "...we already live in an era of me-first journalism, autobiographical blogs and first-person reportage."

It feels like you either fall into one of two camps; you use Twitter without a care or you refuse to succumb to the power of Twitter. If you can use Twitter without worrying about the psychological ramifications of untempered information sharing, good for you. But if you're like Stanley, take a look into why you refuse Twitter. Anti-Twitterers are thriving on their own version of unabashed pretention and self regard; they're just not Twittering about it. And instead, these kinda hypocrites are choosing more conventional outlets of opinion. Like, seriously?

The Internet has changed and continues to change the world and subsequently, society. I mean, come on, hasn't the media always been self-important? Isn't being a journalist, being a celebrity, being in the media, all about self indulgence? People are inherently me-first, tweeting about it just makes it public knowledge, but face it, we all knew that anyways. No one has to like Twitter, but certainly don't condescend with a line like, "There are always some people who, given the chance, will respond to anything, even nothing." Ms. Stanley, you do realize that you are in the media and you are reporting how useless Twitter is, making it clearly important enough to be in the New York Times.

I thought we were over this whole, resistant to change thing. It's one thing to simply not use it, it's quite another to bitch about it and publicly report, essentially, how awesome you are for not having an account. To be frank, the latter just makes you look like a backwards, pretentious fool.

And you'd probably feel much better about yourself with a Tweet to all your pals, instantaneously.