I saw a Bo Burnham video for the first time over the summer, but didn’t think too much of it. I caught a couple of the lines and giggled, but didn’t think it was spectacular. Most of it I just didn’t understand. But since then, I’ve ended up watching his videos on multiple occasions and I have come to realize that this guy is pretty darned funny. He has normal songs about fairy tales or girlfriends. Or he has rap-like songs, where if you actually listen to his lyrics, almost every line has a clever pun instead of an overt joke. However regardless of the song, Bo is almost always on the edge of inappropriate and often makes fun of handicaps and homosexuals. This made me wonder how far it is acceptable for people to go. How mean can Bo be to people in our society before it isn’t funny. Obviously this dilemma is up for debate. Although I think that his material is edgy (which makes it funny to me) many people think it is inappropriate and crude. I was on Bo’s Wikipedia page the other day, and apparently one of his concerts on a college campus was protested by the Gay-Straight Alliance, Black Students Association, International Club, and Cultural Diversity Organization! I thought that this was a little excessive since he is just a boy making some harmless jokes. I feel that comedy is one of the uniting factors of all different people and while insult comedy can be perceived as mean and demeaning, it can also be seen as a bright outlook on problems. No one is listening to the comedy songs to get tips on how to treat other people, so why do these songs cause a problem. So, to me, comedy starts to get inappropriate when it can convince people of its jokes instead of simply making fun of the stereotypes of different races or cultures.
Last night I saw Watchmen. If your intending on seeing this movie, you probably should read this because I’ll spoil it. I had no idea what the plot of this movie was but I heard that it was supposed to be amazing and I had a friend who was going to see it so I tried. So for anyone who doesn’t know about this movie, it is based on a very successful graphic novel about a group of vigilantes that is trying to get by after society turned on them and an anonymous assassin has started killing them off. As it turns out, one of its own members, Adrian, is behind the conspiracy. Adrian is killing his comrades so that he can frame someone for an attack on America and prevent a nuclear war. I know this is confusing, but basically, Adrian destroyed an American city and killed millions of people in order to prevent the murder of millions more.
I don’t feel that this is ethical and a worthy sacrifice, but it is essentially the question of whether you would kill one to save ten. Adrian thought that he was sacrificing one American city and that this would save all of the other cities which were under the threat of nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. However, at least in this case, we already know that this was not a good sacrifice since the Cold War ended without any nuclear attacks. So obviously this was not a smart plan, but it got me to thinking out taking such radical action to prevent the possibility of something bad happening. I think premature action is kind of why we are in Iraq; we were afraid of them potentially having nuclear weapons and everything so we decided to act just in case they wanted to attack the US. So I feel like its not very smart to act radically on a problem before its actually a problem.
Video games have been under the constant scrutiny by people who think that it stops kids from finding more physically demanding forms of entertainment. I’ve known people who have become obsessed with certain games; particularly online games like World of Warcraft and Diablo and Counter Strike. There was even an episode of South Park which made fun of gamers by having the four kids get obsessed with an online game and get fat and dirty and stop caring about anything other than their games. However, the new system by Nintendo, Wii, has started to change some of the negative notions about video games. This system gives the impression of being a more active game system since the player must swing the controller and use physical motions instead of simple button pushing. Also, the main game for Wii is called Wii Sports, which has baseball, boxing, tennis, golf, and bowling. This seems like it would support kids getting into sports. Instead, I think that the time spent playing Wii Sports is actually replacing time they could be outside playing real baseball and other sports. One new game, Wii Fit, is an actual game designed to give the player a workout. There is a pad that senses the player’s weight and can tell when that weight is shifting. The game has many different workouts which require the player to do pushups and yoga and various other workouts on the sensor. This is a tool in helping to get the gaming community more physically fit and providing a fun and competitive way to get a good workout. However it is still stopping the kids from going outside and getting natural workouts with other kids and finding a love for being active. Essentially, I think its way too American to try to exercise indoors to a TV when in reality, its more fun outside of your room anyway!
So I recently saw “I’m on a Boat” which is a song and accompanying video created by a few guys involved with SNL. These three guys, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Andy Samberg, call themselves The Lonely Island and create and compile a bunch of short comedy songs. Many of the short videos that they have created are ridiculously funny and have become huge hits when they air on SNL and have gotten many millions of views. My personal favorite segment that will be on their album is “Jizz in my Pants.” Even though I feel like the video is a very important part of the comedic power of this song, this song has ridiculous but witty lyrics that have made it a huge YouTube hit. They are also responsible for similarly clever songs like “My Dick in a Box” and “Lazy Sunday.”
Their most recent song, “I’m on a Boat,” however, is not the same as their previous works. The first thing that I noticed about this song is that there are really only about five different phrases that they use without much variation or innovation. All of the other lyrics that The Lonely Island has written are witty the whole way through and keep the viewer interested with new jokes the whole way through. In “I’m on a Boat,” they basically just keep swearing and saying their on a boat with a few words about the boat in the middle (I suppose this is supposed to be the verse.) To make it worse, this group used the fame of T-Pain to boost their views. I think it is perfectly normal for any group to have a few failed singles, I just hope that The Lonely Island hasn’t started resting on their laurels and coasting off the viewers that they have already earned!
I was listening to LA the radio for the first time in the car the other day, and I realized that radio advertising is probably the least effective way to get people hooked on a product. For starters, I think that visuals are the most effective and convincing aspect of advertisements. Companies can show glamour or attractive people and other common ways to make their product seem like a necessity. Also, it is hard to get many new customers when virtually no one hears your ad! Any other form of advertisement has a very high chance of reaching potential customers. Companies are guaranteed that people will drive by their billboards on the work or on their way to the mall. There will always be people going to certain web sites, so it is effective to have little visual ads on the sides of web sites. People even watch television commercials much more than radio. Since television shows are generally have some sort of story line or are showing a specific show that you desire, so you are less likely to change the channel. There is generally not another channel that is not on commercial which will be showing the same show that you want therefore most TV viewers are willing to wait through commercials. Even if the viewer gets up to do grab some food or do a quick chore during the commercial break, at least the sound of the advertisements will still reach them. In contrast to all these forms of advertisement, I’ve never been in the car with anyone who listens to radio commercials. The issue is that when a radio station goes to a commercial break, there are always multiple other stations which play the same type of music and at least one of them won’t be on commercial. So unless one particular station is playing a desirable talk show or something worth tuning in for, there is no reason for anyone to stay tuned through advertisements.
I think that name brand items are a very interesting concept. I have known a lot of people who were gung-ho about them and think that they are actually a necessarily since they save money. In my English class senior year of high school, we used to have debates every Friday about whatever subject the class voted on. One week we had a debate about name brand items. One of the girls who was pro-name brands made the argument that cheaper items don’t last as long, so you will eventually save money. She also brought up that they are more fashionable and are, therefore, have more bang for your buck. The other side of the class argued that these products are a blatant waste of money since it is multiple times more expensive to buy name brands which cheaper products often last a lifetime anyway. So really I feel like the whole debate comes down to what society perceives as fashionable and the monetary value that people put on how others’ perceive you. First, it’s a very American thing to associate wealth with fashion. Even though many brand names bags and clothes are not particularly pleasing to the eye, they are still trendy since people associate them with class and money. Even if the people sporting this fashion didn’t earn the money they are showing, it is still cool to be wealthy. How people feel about the issue of brand names is essentially decided by what they think their money is worth. Of course there are many people who have no problem spending the extra money on these items, so why not indulge? So even though I have my own stance on name brand apparel and fashion, I reserve judgment on people who follow this trend since it is a simple personal choice that harms no one and lets them express themselves.
A picture of Michael Phelps smoking marijuana was recently made public. For anyone who has been living in a cave, Michael Phelps is an American swimmer who recently won eight gold medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. He earned more medals than anyone has ever earned at a single Olympics, boosting him into the American spotlight. He was on the cover of countless magazines and was a major topic of discussion. It seemed that he was on the top of the world until this recent scandal. After a warm up in the 2004 Olympics (he only won 6 gold metals you know) the world was shocked when the golden boy got a DUI. One would thing that he had learned his lesson however. Instead, as if it is a tradition, Phelps was again caught for substance abuse after these Olympics. However this time he has more to lose and the substance was illegal. A few of his sponsors, including Kellogg’s, have dropped him because of his newly tainted image and US swimming has suspended him for three months.
All of this made me wonder what it is that would make someone who is on top of the world make such a rash decision that could have bad repercussions when it is so easy to get caught. To most Americans, it seems as if he has a perfect life and that this is just a stupid kid not thinking through what he is doing. However I feel like there could have been more to his motives than just a high. He might have been reaching out for attention as his Olympic success stopped being the main topic of conversation. Or maybe he was tired of his life being just about swimming and he was looking for a way out of it and tell the world that he is a normal kid instead of some kind of god.
Last Wednesday I was at the UCLA vs. USC basketball game where, naturally, UCLA was up by over twenty points. I had heard through the grape vine that Percy Miller Jr., more commonly known as Lil’ Romeo, was playing for the USC team. When they were so far behind at the end of the second half, Percy actually played. Immediately the entire crowd started jostling him and chanting mean things to him. This seemed natural he is a famous entertainer who was trying to play college basketball. It seemed to everyone that he has more to prove than any of the other players. After the game, a main topic of conversation was how Percy must have bought his way onto the basketball team and that he probably should be playing at all. But then I realized that this could all be a lie. Since Lil’ Romeo is a famous rapper, everyone assumes that Percy gets handed everything in life; everyone assumes that he was given a spot in the basketball team because he made some sort of donation instead of his actual talent. I mean, anyone would have been nervous if he had so many people watching just him and jeering or chanting hurtful things. And even though he was the shortest guy on the court, he was still able to lead his offense pretty well and had a few potentially good plays. So is it fair to judge him just because he is well known for different things? Even though he isn’t a starter, he was still able to hold his own against some of the top college basketball players in the country. So even though it is fun to give this poor kid such a hard time because of his past, I believe that we should consider if it is truly warranted to believe all the hurtful things we say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfLAv3JHRwY
This is a video that a friend showed me one night while we were surfing youtube.com. At first, naturally, I thought it was a ridiculous and annoying video. Unfortunately for my roommates, it has grown on me so I recommend that everyone watch it six times over a few days before they make their decisions about it.
However having watched about half of this videos views views, I started considering the type of humor that this video has. This is not a simple comically sexual song that usually comes up on youtube. This song is based on a childrens’ show, therefore the first impression of the video is very innocent. The little girl singing about cake with a catchy tune is abruptly sliced by a raunchy Lil’ Jon clip. The comedy is created by the blatant defacing of this innocent song with sexual lyrics and dirty dancing. The people who edited this video were able to take the dance moves from the normal video and overlay them with the rap lyrics to make it seem dirty. There are a lot of things in the original Lazy Town video which are entirely G rated which were able to be turned into a sexual action. For example, in the childrens’ show, the kids are trying to make a cake, and they accidentally squirt a man with the cake frosting since they are having a hard time following the recipe. In this video, this action is perceived as a male ejaculation because of the lyrics of the song at the time when this clip is shown.
This song is entirely made interesting by the contrast of the two videos. I have watched both of the original videos which compose this one, and I didn’t particularly enjoy either of them.
Over the weekend, I went to see the movie Underworld. This is a series of movies about an ongoing war between werewolves and vampires. I thought it was interesting because of the perspective that this movie took as opposed to the first two in the series. The first two were from the point of view of the vampires. The werewolves are portrayed as mindless beasts who should be destroyed. The reason for their war is never explained, however viewers see vampires in a good light. In the most recent movie, which is a prequel describing the beginning of the war, the opposite is true. Despite how the viewers will later see these creatures, the writers were able to give the story and entirely different spin and make the werewolves seem oppressed and taken advantage of and therefore fighting a noble fight. I thought it was interesting how the writers were able to change up the roles of protagonist and antagonist so easily, even in the middle of a series. It is always easy to see who the writers want the “good guy” to be. However the fact that they were so easily able to change these roles made me think about what they did to make me see the characters in this light. In the first few movies, there was little to go on. The werewolves were perceived as mindless, but there was no mention of why they needed to be killed. So the only real reason that the viewer is on the vampires’ side is that they are from the vampire point of view. In this third movie, however, there was a specific reason for the werewolves to be the protagonist, which made me change my opinion. This was easily done even though many of the werewolves were still perceived as mindless beasts.
