Even though we're all against mandates for anything, really, sometimes an exception must be made.
We've got to lock them in a room and play "Airplane" until they get better. It's the only way. I mean sure, we could do it with "Blazing Saddles" too but I'd rather start with a lower dose.
Funny thing. For years I was tormented by this tune running through my head and I just couldn't nail it. And finally one day I realized it was "Yakety Sax" and that Bennie Hill had never left me.
Remember how in the early days of this our neverending Plague Era I was saying how sad it is that we can't all get together in one huge backyard and kibbitz in the actuals? Include in that screenings of all our favorites. If something like that was coming we'd all need to practice our Kegels to survive it without embarrassment.
My son and I are going back to watch 70's and 80's comedies, often for the first time. So many hilarious ones could not be made today- or would have their backbone stripped out for 'PC-ness'. Stir Crazy, Silver Streak, UHF, to name a few.
Personally, I'd lock them in a room with some Bakshi. Mebbe some Fritz the Cat or Coonskin. Heads would explode.
You start 'em off too strong they'll never get anything. True subversive humor, you've got to prepare the field. You want to grow the inclination. You want, first, that they should have some real genuine so-strong-your-stomach cramps laughter at something brilliant but not too layered.
As I know with she who was my FFFG, these are not bad people mostly. There's often a desperate hurt and emptiness that they can't even recognize they're feeling. They need to hit out because they are unrelentingly miserable.
To reference something else I said in the thread--can we play theme songs from our favorites, and we'll sit there laughing and eventually they will just have to peek.
We can add music to the experience - when the wife and I lived in the city many years ago, we took in lodgers as we had spare rooms. One of them was a girl, 25 at the time, who had zero experience of the kind of music, movies, stand-up routines or even good'ole bucolic and rambunctious vaudeville-theater:
Yokel: "Me wife says me tackle is like a horse-radish."
Farmhand: "Long and white?"
Yokel: "Nah, covered in dirt and stinky"
(snare drum)
After her initial shock, that - in her words! - "people back then were allowed to joke like that" (she meant the 1990s) she came around and started thinking and asking where the comedy disappeared to.
I second the Bakshi-treatment. "Heavy Traffic" would be my go-to, despite not being american.
Have to admit though, canadian Rand Holmes' "Harold Hedd" and other comics was my favourite when underground comics papers published them over here in the 1980s.
I've always liked Rodreguez- The Aesop Brothers (siamese twins) and Deirdre Callahan, the World's Ugliest Girl.
When the woke pule all I can hear are the Brothers shouting out the window at 'normal people' "Unkies (normal non-conjoined people) don't wet the bed! Nyahh!"
There were two brothers and one was going to take a vacation. So, the brother says to the other brother “can you look after my cat while I’m on vacation?” And the other brother says, “sure no problem.” A week later the brother comes back from vacation and says “how’s the cat?” And the other brother says “oh, sorry man, the cat’s dead.” The brother says “what?!” The other brother says, “yeah sorry, the cat died.” Then the brother says, “are you kidding me, man, you don’t just spring that on somebody!” The other brother says “how should I have done it?” The brother said, “I don’t know, prepare me a little, tell me ‘the cat was on the roof, and you walked out and saw it, it started sliding, you ran over to get it but you didn’t make it in time. You then took the cat to the vet to try to save it and then after that – you can say “I’m really sorry but your cat passed away. That’s the way you prepare somebody.” The other brother says, “got it, I understand now.”
Then the first brother changes the subject and asks, “How’s mom?” The other brother says “well, mom was on the roof.”
Ägget är löst! (The Egg is Loose!, a swedish comedy-drama from the 1970s)
Picasso's Äventyr (Adventure of Picasso, comedy from the 1980s, is censored-by-Youtube due to having a running gag about a Gestapo officer heiling and sticking his hand in things every time)
The Rat Race (the newer version, apparently the gag about the Barbie-museum is too much for youngsters)
Any stand-up pre-2000s (young'uns trying to decry 'Raw' as being "white supremacist" is hilarious)
Swedish comedy troupe Grotesco - basically any skit will do, but "Det är bögarnas fel"/"Blame the gays for everything" has become semi-notorious on Youtube)
Really, any comedy-drama-whatever pre-2000s, and if it's pre-1990s even better.
Honestly, just making them listen to Goldie Hawn's giggle from Laugh-In would be the kill-or-cure master shot. They've probably never experienced a moment of pure ridiculously pure joy ever.
But an international roundup of the best shows from when people actually were made to laugh from the core--well, we'd never get anything done.
Have now! It was very much spot-on, I'll give it that.
I did need the subtitles for their home-brewed "swedish".
A lot of our dramatists post-Bergman veered right into self-parody when trying to outdo him, unknowingly so. Somewhen in the mid-1980s, the Bergman-esque drama was so played out you'd get that feeling when you don't know if you're watching a subtle self-aware parody, or the real thing.
And then that dane, von Trier, just had to crank it to eleven.
I like where you're going with this but I think we should make them watch the Kentucky fried movie, guaranteed to make The delicate little. snowflakes Hysterical, it will be fun to watch.
For God's sake. Aspirin may be my miracle drug but I'm not going to dose it the way they did with all those poor soldiers during the Spanish Flu pandemic.
This "emperor has no clothes" painting might be my favorite yet. I think Bad Cat might have already published this and I perhaps borrowed it from this site.
It is the perfect art work for my essay - "A partial list of What they Did to Us." We should NEVER forget.
OMG...I managed to find the movie Zero Hour. It is the original that Airplane! spoofed. It is serious and because it is serious, it is hilarious. From the 1950's I think. A must watch for hardcore gladiator movie fans. I mean disaster movie fans.
And of course the greatest thing about Zero Hour! is Sterling Hayden because if you watch that film you can't stop yourself thinking of him as Gen. Jack D. Ripper.
Now for a list of leading man hunky (hunky! not honky!) actors who had enough of a sense of humor to parody themselves in later films.
What's happening now with the fun-police being a problem 15 or 20 years after an event is going to have a significant effect on national culture. I anticipate that soon the culture is going to develop in a new way to counter this obsessive nagging-wife type of behavior. Especially as it begins to effect the political class.
Woke progressives are evil and enjoy hurting innocent people. What we're seeing with JD Vance is new. He is the first major political figure who was a child after the creation of digital cameras. The ubiquity of digital systems means that every single thing a person has ever done for the last 40 years is going to be dragged out by the opposing team.
The results of this, and we're likely to see it emerge forcefully in the next 7 to 10 years, is the appearance of a cultural code-of-honor when it comes to old material. There'll be a simple rule of "if it was more than X years ago, it doesn't matter" that'll get applied. First to the political class, and then to every one. The idea that anything you've ever done, at the drop of a hat 50 years down the line, will be brought back out to abuse you is going to shock the culture. Western culture is going to develop a new taboo very quickly and very soon. The treatment of JD Vance is going to be the first shot across the bow here.
We're seeing the emergence of post-digital culture and right now we're going through the growing pains. There's going to be a lot of changes in the very near future.
I’m the same age as Vance. There is a picture somewhere of my three best gfs and me dressed up goofy as hell going to the local convenience store making funny gestures out of tampon boxes. I’m sure we’d get crap from Tampon Tim’s crew for making jokes about our periods and what not, but it was fun. We didn’t have social media. We didn’t have phones to destroy us. We just had dumb fun.
The entire message surrounding Vance is so shocking to me. He seems like a great dude. He overcame a life of potential drug induced poverty and is possibly next VP of the US. I find that awesome.
We all did goofy, fun stuff. It was a way to push the limits without doing anything truly regretful or dangerous. I can only hope my grandkids have as much fun.
At that age a friend and I dressed up in bedsheets as Iranian protestors (complete with 'Down With the Shah" signs) to protest being forced to go to the opening of this fugly reservoir somewhere in Kansas while attending a summer camp at KU. The funny thing was everyone else got the worst chiggers of their lives from sitting on that grass and because of our bedsheets, we had none. I lost the pics when my parent's basement flooded many years later.
Dumb fun indeed. I thank the gods i grew up before social media.
This type of behavior is going to generate the first hard cultural taboo of the 21st century: "Though shalt not bring up anything that happened before 7 years ago, pictures or not." It'll be decades before it's codified, but once major politicians and celebrities are regularly subject to this type of embarrassment it'll end.
I’m a lot younger, not quite 30 yet. My friends and I in HS would go to Shari’s, everyone would order a different slice of pie and we’d get a bunch of onion rings. Everyone take a bite of pie and pass them around for everyone to try while eating onion rings at the same time.
I don’t understand why pie and onion rings was the combo… but it was good fun!
One time we opened packets of Splenda and other sweeteners and poured them and salt all over the table to fake other white powders, and left our tip in 1s and change in a huge pile before leaving.
How we never got kicked out I don’t know. But the absolute abuse we’d have possibly faced now if pictures were posted.
Back in my day tips were left in a glass of water turned upsidedown. Hilarious when the waitress wasn't paying attention and picked up the glass, water went everywhere.
The problem with trying to do that nowadays is they don't serve water to anyone anymore. Another one was getting on top of the buildings and throwing eggs at passing cars until a semi driver got pissed. I came from a very small farming community in Iowa there wasn't much to do. Drinking and skinny-dipping never did any cow tipping never heard of it until I was older and had moved to LA.
Sometime in the mid 1990's, I attended a Halloween party costumed as a soiled tampon. My wife assisted fabrication of the costume. We both thought it was pretty damn funny, which probably has a lot to do with why she is still my wife.
It appears a new cultural taboo is forming. It'll be slow, but the fun-police will be absolutely crushed once it effects a major political figure of both parties.
Woke progressives are evil and enjoy hurting innocent people. What we're seeing with JD Vance is new. He is the first major political figure who was a child after the creation of digital cameras. The ubiquity of digital systems means that every single thing a person has ever done for the last 40 years is going to be dragged out by the opposing team.
The results of this, and we're likely to see it emerge forcefully in the next 7 to 10 years, is the appearance of a cultural code-of-honor when it comes to old material. There'll be a simple rule of "if it was more than X years ago, it doesn't matter" that'll get applied. First to the political class, and then to every one. The idea that anything you've ever done, at the drop of a hat 50 years down the line, will be brought back out to abuse you is going to shock the culture. Western culture is going to develop a new taboo very quickly and very soon. The treatment of JD Vance is going to be the first shot across the bow here.
We're seeing the emergence of post-digital culture and right now we're going through the growing pains. There's going to be a lot of changes in the very near future.
Agree! If you read Hillbilly Elegy, you’d know what a rough time Vance had growing up. Look at the man now - I found it more impressive, not less to know he persevered and was goofy as a kid. That wasn’t a salient feature of his childhood. Those days were pre-social media. This is so weak on the part of the media and of his “frens” - can you say envious?
I tell my kids constantly that their mom and I grew up in a time (teenagers in the 90's) where cell phone cameras and social media didn't exist. Truly liberating. You could F around and as long as no one snitched, you got away with it (IQ test for friend selection). When people talked and joked, they just said stuff. It either hit or it didn't. The audience was the filter. We didn't have Karens to control our speech. I grew up with migrant worker kids in WNY and we all hung together and the stuff they said about their own was freaking hilarious. We dished it to them too...but the expectation was that they could dish it back. And man, it was fun, and we were closer because of it. There was no state-approved representative there to tell us what we could and couldn't say. The things we said in 1995 would land us in jail today. But that trust to poke at each other stitches our society closer than what we have now. With the lines drawn, we don't trust each other to truly be who we are. It's sad.
9-11 changed us more than we really thought...the increase in government oversight in our daily lives, all for the sake of security, really laid the framework for the oversight into speech and actions we have today. Classic cooking the frog theory.
Plus, I really want to go to the gate again without a ticket...lol
Those with Trump Derangement Syndrome are narcissists who are smarter than the rest of us. They will not listen to a rational discussion because they are so superior to us mere mortals. Unfortunately, narcissism is one of two mental illnesses that cannot be cured. (The other one is hoarders.)
I am wrangling with this, packaged my things up in boxes a year ago now. My move was delayed a year, but it was the only way I could really clear out and do deep cleans on the structure. We really are drowning in items, for the most part. Its been nice to wean it down to some essentials. Next stop, Waldens cabin.
Ha, funny you should mention that. I have a 1914 lotus design Singer I would sell, though I paid $100 for it. It works fine. You can contact me at my name all one word @protonmail.com. I am in Oregon.
I have several. 3 feather weights, a 301A, a 316G and a 201
I have many more. you can have those :-)
No really, I also have a White machine with a walking foot almost always attached and set in my mother in laws fancy walnut dining table.... My house is great haha
I used to figure skate back in the day and had a good skater friend that went to a house locally to visit and help a very obese friend, whose husband hoarded ... trash, old toothpaste tubes? caps cardboard etc
I loaned a copy of Blazing Saddles to my physical therapist who was 40 some years younger than me.
The ironic comedy was lost to her. I thought it was simply generational, and she was overly sensitive. Now I think the overly sensitive was the warning I should have taken 10+ years ago.
Without a sense of that which is ironic about our experiences and an innate appreciation for life's contradictions, there's not gonna be a sense of humour. Remember cartoonist Gary Larson's 'Far Side"?
My husband bought me his entire 2 volume book set The Complete Far Side Volumes 1&2. They must weigh 20 lbs. I went through each page, and let myself do like 5 per day. Took me a year to get through both books. Best gift ever. Hubs gets me.
I live in a Napoleon Dynaminte area. But the kids around here on the school buses would not scream when the farmer shot the cow by the side of the road. They would all just say "Looks like that is whats for dinner." Uncle Rico...I spot him in a lot of movies. Like Waldo.
Talking with my son (an aspiring comedian) yesterday about the Olympics opening ceremony, and I was saying, “yes, absolutely, we should be able to mock everything. But ignoring the context and intention, and gaslighting people about it, is disingenuous and corrupt. You wouldn’t make retard jokes at the opening ceremony to the Special Olympics, or tell pedophile jokes in the juvenile trauma group home.”
Gen X here. Sad for the fact that comedy and joy in general has been co-opted by the Scold Squad.
Looking back was much of it retrograde. Yes. Especially in high school.
So we laughed. Then we went out with our fake IDs and partied until last call, somehow dragged ourselves out of bed to get to school or work on time, then did it all over again the next day. Especially in college.
The left lost me when they stopped being funny. The harder they try to be "cool" and ingratiate themselves with everyone from furies to Haitian gangs the more boring they become.
The left were never funny. They just convinced you that 'evil right-wingers hate people for no reason', and so you laughed at a construct that never existed.
Nobody hates people for no reason. Well, except leftists.
A pleasure to be away from the uk right now. Dystopian Kier is doing his best to terrorise the residents of the country. Fortunately he will be gone one day. Meanwhile here is the USA msm is duking it out between harris and trump. Wow when did people choose to stoop this low on either side? It is ugly. Just here to help out family expecting a little boy today. Time to get back to normal, people. Stop allowing fools to terrorise, annoy, irritate and cause mayhem.
♥ I put that in one of my Substacks and my son privately texted me and highlighted this, as he thought it was a mistake. I am like "No typo son. Just ask Bugs Bunny."
In the 90's, one of my husband's and my favorite shows was Floyd on Food, a BBC production. Keith Floyd was a natural comedian and even though neither of us was a "foodie", we tuned in to every episode for the laughs.
I seriously don't think younger generations will ever understand what life was like for us GenX'ers. This was funny for us. And we certainly didn't get offended by it.
I keep waiting for the media to get around to discussing the issues currently affecting our lives. But it appears that they are hell-bent on prioritizing the past and ignoring anything relevant.
I wonder what historians will have to say about this current era. I can't imagine we'll be seen in a positive light.
The other day I was at my neighborhood cafe having a chat with some friends. I happened casually to use the word retarded. As in: "The Covid response wasn't science - it was retardation!".
And I noticed the 20-somethings in the cafe looked kinda shocked, like I'd just said something super edgy.
When clothes and music from the 80s were the rage a few years ago, I told my high schooler that the 80s included an attitude of distrust for authority, not its embracement.
Even though we're all against mandates for anything, really, sometimes an exception must be made.
We've got to lock them in a room and play "Airplane" until they get better. It's the only way. I mean sure, we could do it with "Blazing Saddles" too but I'd rather start with a lower dose.
Just about anything from Monty Python, Bennie Hill, or Are You Being Served!
Funny thing. For years I was tormented by this tune running through my head and I just couldn't nail it. And finally one day I realized it was "Yakety Sax" and that Bennie Hill had never left me.
That was a crazy show. Lots of laughs.
We loved it.
How about the “carry on” movies? Hilarious 🤣
You Rang My Lord - with the transvestite daughter and the younger a man-iac. Was one of my favorites when I was younger, and still love it
and maybe a little Young Frankenstein. and History of the World Part One
You don't start first graders off with "Northanger Abbey." You begin with "Alligators All Around" and work your way up.
We're not dealing with sophisticated people here though we hope to awaken undiscovered depths.
... people of the land, salt of the earth, you know, morons.
Well, I've had this discussion before, the appropriate usage of "morons" and "idiots." Nuance. Always feel for the nuance.
Too nuanced an approach. Go straight for the jugular.
If you'd spent sleepless nights trying to get the right word to use in a 1000-word limit story you'd understand my feelings.
"The common clay of the New West..." If you missed the reference I have a homework assignment for you.
Well. The interwebs is always our friend.
Remember how in the early days of this our neverending Plague Era I was saying how sad it is that we can't all get together in one huge backyard and kibbitz in the actuals? Include in that screenings of all our favorites. If something like that was coming we'd all need to practice our Kegels to survive it without embarrassment.
"What's a dazzling urbanite like yourself doing in a rustic setting like this?"
My son and I are going back to watch 70's and 80's comedies, often for the first time. So many hilarious ones could not be made today- or would have their backbone stripped out for 'PC-ness'. Stir Crazy, Silver Streak, UHF, to name a few.
Personally, I'd lock them in a room with some Bakshi. Mebbe some Fritz the Cat or Coonskin. Heads would explode.
Sanford and Son. That's my recommendation. Talk about anti-PC. So hilarious.
“All in the Family”, and “The Jeffersons”…I watched every week! My generation had a sense of humor!
I wasn't allowed to watch that one til I was 12 or 13 🤣
Oh gods, I find myself yelling "You Big Dummy!" when stuck behind idiots in traffic.
finding a few Simpsons oldies helps you understand the crap going on as well. See you later vaxxinator
You start 'em off too strong they'll never get anything. True subversive humor, you've got to prepare the field. You want to grow the inclination. You want, first, that they should have some real genuine so-strong-your-stomach cramps laughter at something brilliant but not too layered.
As I know with she who was my FFFG, these are not bad people mostly. There's often a desperate hurt and emptiness that they can't even recognize they're feeling. They need to hit out because they are unrelentingly miserable.
You make a good case for the incremental approach.
Would you at least force their eyes open à la Clockwork Orange?
To reference something else I said in the thread--can we play theme songs from our favorites, and we'll sit there laughing and eventually they will just have to peek.
We can add music to the experience - when the wife and I lived in the city many years ago, we took in lodgers as we had spare rooms. One of them was a girl, 25 at the time, who had zero experience of the kind of music, movies, stand-up routines or even good'ole bucolic and rambunctious vaudeville-theater:
Yokel: "Me wife says me tackle is like a horse-radish."
Farmhand: "Long and white?"
Yokel: "Nah, covered in dirt and stinky"
(snare drum)
After her initial shock, that - in her words! - "people back then were allowed to joke like that" (she meant the 1990s) she came around and started thinking and asking where the comedy disappeared to.
I second the Bakshi-treatment. "Heavy Traffic" would be my go-to, despite not being american.
"...allowed to joke like that?"
The world-wide plague encapsulated in one perplexed question.
Silver Streak with Gene Wilder wearing black shoe polish … 🤣🤣🤣 a classic!
Especially since it is Pryor who makes him do it!!
Also Fabulous Furry Freak Bros!!!
Oh yeah! And Zippy the Pinhead!
Have to admit though, canadian Rand Holmes' "Harold Hedd" and other comics was my favourite when underground comics papers published them over here in the 1980s.
My husband had a couple of Harold Hedd books.
Much less tame than the Freak Bros, fer sure.
I've always liked Rodreguez- The Aesop Brothers (siamese twins) and Deirdre Callahan, the World's Ugliest Girl.
When the woke pule all I can hear are the Brothers shouting out the window at 'normal people' "Unkies (normal non-conjoined people) don't wet the bed! Nyahh!"
The way to ease people into change:
The Cat’s on the Roof Technique -
There were two brothers and one was going to take a vacation. So, the brother says to the other brother “can you look after my cat while I’m on vacation?” And the other brother says, “sure no problem.” A week later the brother comes back from vacation and says “how’s the cat?” And the other brother says “oh, sorry man, the cat’s dead.” The brother says “what?!” The other brother says, “yeah sorry, the cat died.” Then the brother says, “are you kidding me, man, you don’t just spring that on somebody!” The other brother says “how should I have done it?” The brother said, “I don’t know, prepare me a little, tell me ‘the cat was on the roof, and you walked out and saw it, it started sliding, you ran over to get it but you didn’t make it in time. You then took the cat to the vet to try to save it and then after that – you can say “I’m really sorry but your cat passed away. That’s the way you prepare somebody.” The other brother says, “got it, I understand now.”
Then the first brother changes the subject and asks, “How’s mom?” The other brother says “well, mom was on the roof.”
I swear I heard this one somewhere but always good to see it again...
The Producers
Top Secret!
Ägget är löst! (The Egg is Loose!, a swedish comedy-drama from the 1970s)
Picasso's Äventyr (Adventure of Picasso, comedy from the 1980s, is censored-by-Youtube due to having a running gag about a Gestapo officer heiling and sticking his hand in things every time)
The Rat Race (the newer version, apparently the gag about the Barbie-museum is too much for youngsters)
Any stand-up pre-2000s (young'uns trying to decry 'Raw' as being "white supremacist" is hilarious)
Swedish comedy troupe Grotesco - basically any skit will do, but "Det är bögarnas fel"/"Blame the gays for everything" has become semi-notorious on Youtube)
Really, any comedy-drama-whatever pre-2000s, and if it's pre-1990s even better.
Honestly, just making them listen to Goldie Hawn's giggle from Laugh-In would be the kill-or-cure master shot. They've probably never experienced a moment of pure ridiculously pure joy ever.
But an international roundup of the best shows from when people actually were made to laugh from the core--well, we'd never get anything done.
Top Secret! One of my all-time favorites!
Rikard - have you ever seen Der Duve a parody of Ingmar Bergman films? 1968
Have now! It was very much spot-on, I'll give it that.
I did need the subtitles for their home-brewed "swedish".
A lot of our dramatists post-Bergman veered right into self-parody when trying to outdo him, unknowingly so. Somewhen in the mid-1980s, the Bergman-esque drama was so played out you'd get that feeling when you don't know if you're watching a subtle self-aware parody, or the real thing.
And then that dane, von Trier, just had to crank it to eleven.
Naw, blast'em with a full dose of Blazing Saddles. Tough love.
Spinal Tap, sad to say, is too subtle.
Oh, all right then.
You changed my mind further down the thread.
I like where you're going with this but I think we should make them watch the Kentucky fried movie, guaranteed to make The delicate little. snowflakes Hysterical, it will be fun to watch.
For God's sake. Aspirin may be my miracle drug but I'm not going to dose it the way they did with all those poor soldiers during the Spanish Flu pandemic.
Oh yes! Try them on the original 'Death Race 2000', the one with David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone.
Under-30 somethings can't get their heads around it, at all.
Or Roger Corman's Gas-s-s-s from 1970.
PS: I loved that movie. I can't believe I am that old, that I saw it when it came out.
This "emperor has no clothes" painting might be my favorite yet. I think Bad Cat might have already published this and I perhaps borrowed it from this site.
It is the perfect art work for my essay - "A partial list of What they Did to Us." We should NEVER forget.
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/what-they-did-to-us
That was a great picture. Well, for what it was anyway. Spot on.
Idiocracy?
Surely you aren't serious?
Don't call me Shirley!
OMG...I managed to find the movie Zero Hour. It is the original that Airplane! spoofed. It is serious and because it is serious, it is hilarious. From the 1950's I think. A must watch for hardcore gladiator movie fans. I mean disaster movie fans.
And of course the greatest thing about Zero Hour! is Sterling Hayden because if you watch that film you can't stop yourself thinking of him as Gen. Jack D. Ripper.
Now for a list of leading man hunky (hunky! not honky!) actors who had enough of a sense of humor to parody themselves in later films.
Anyone else see Victor Mature in After the Fox?
I have not seen that, but I agree. Love the men who can laugh at themselves as they get older. You don't see many women doing that.
What's happening now with the fun-police being a problem 15 or 20 years after an event is going to have a significant effect on national culture. I anticipate that soon the culture is going to develop in a new way to counter this obsessive nagging-wife type of behavior. Especially as it begins to effect the political class.
Woke progressives are evil and enjoy hurting innocent people. What we're seeing with JD Vance is new. He is the first major political figure who was a child after the creation of digital cameras. The ubiquity of digital systems means that every single thing a person has ever done for the last 40 years is going to be dragged out by the opposing team.
The results of this, and we're likely to see it emerge forcefully in the next 7 to 10 years, is the appearance of a cultural code-of-honor when it comes to old material. There'll be a simple rule of "if it was more than X years ago, it doesn't matter" that'll get applied. First to the political class, and then to every one. The idea that anything you've ever done, at the drop of a hat 50 years down the line, will be brought back out to abuse you is going to shock the culture. Western culture is going to develop a new taboo very quickly and very soon. The treatment of JD Vance is going to be the first shot across the bow here.
We're seeing the emergence of post-digital culture and right now we're going through the growing pains. There's going to be a lot of changes in the very near future.
The exception to no mandates are those who supported or instituted mandates.
Well. I don't want to *be* them.
If we assert our humor in sufficient numbers, maybe we can overwhelm the Karentocracy. I'm in, let's go.
i see no downside to this plan.
I agree. And remember to always pick the lasagne as your inflight meal.
I’m the same age as Vance. There is a picture somewhere of my three best gfs and me dressed up goofy as hell going to the local convenience store making funny gestures out of tampon boxes. I’m sure we’d get crap from Tampon Tim’s crew for making jokes about our periods and what not, but it was fun. We didn’t have social media. We didn’t have phones to destroy us. We just had dumb fun.
The entire message surrounding Vance is so shocking to me. He seems like a great dude. He overcame a life of potential drug induced poverty and is possibly next VP of the US. I find that awesome.
I want us to be able to laugh again.
Thanks for this substack!
We all did goofy, fun stuff. It was a way to push the limits without doing anything truly regretful or dangerous. I can only hope my grandkids have as much fun.
At that age a friend and I dressed up in bedsheets as Iranian protestors (complete with 'Down With the Shah" signs) to protest being forced to go to the opening of this fugly reservoir somewhere in Kansas while attending a summer camp at KU. The funny thing was everyone else got the worst chiggers of their lives from sitting on that grass and because of our bedsheets, we had none. I lost the pics when my parent's basement flooded many years later.
Dumb fun indeed. I thank the gods i grew up before social media.
This type of behavior is going to generate the first hard cultural taboo of the 21st century: "Though shalt not bring up anything that happened before 7 years ago, pictures or not." It'll be decades before it's codified, but once major politicians and celebrities are regularly subject to this type of embarrassment it'll end.
I’m a lot younger, not quite 30 yet. My friends and I in HS would go to Shari’s, everyone would order a different slice of pie and we’d get a bunch of onion rings. Everyone take a bite of pie and pass them around for everyone to try while eating onion rings at the same time.
I don’t understand why pie and onion rings was the combo… but it was good fun!
One time we opened packets of Splenda and other sweeteners and poured them and salt all over the table to fake other white powders, and left our tip in 1s and change in a huge pile before leaving.
How we never got kicked out I don’t know. But the absolute abuse we’d have possibly faced now if pictures were posted.
"One time" we... Reminded me of American Pie "this one time, at band camp"
Funny you should mention it, most of us were band kids. 😂
Back in my day tips were left in a glass of water turned upsidedown. Hilarious when the waitress wasn't paying attention and picked up the glass, water went everywhere.
Can’t remember if we ever did that one. I know it was talked about.
The problem with trying to do that nowadays is they don't serve water to anyone anymore. Another one was getting on top of the buildings and throwing eggs at passing cars until a semi driver got pissed. I came from a very small farming community in Iowa there wasn't much to do. Drinking and skinny-dipping never did any cow tipping never heard of it until I was older and had moved to LA.
Trump / Vance '24 - making laughing legal again
Sometime in the mid 1990's, I attended a Halloween party costumed as a soiled tampon. My wife assisted fabrication of the costume. We both thought it was pretty damn funny, which probably has a lot to do with why she is still my wife.
That’s hilarious. You and your wife sound awesome!!
It appears a new cultural taboo is forming. It'll be slow, but the fun-police will be absolutely crushed once it effects a major political figure of both parties.
Woke progressives are evil and enjoy hurting innocent people. What we're seeing with JD Vance is new. He is the first major political figure who was a child after the creation of digital cameras. The ubiquity of digital systems means that every single thing a person has ever done for the last 40 years is going to be dragged out by the opposing team.
The results of this, and we're likely to see it emerge forcefully in the next 7 to 10 years, is the appearance of a cultural code-of-honor when it comes to old material. There'll be a simple rule of "if it was more than X years ago, it doesn't matter" that'll get applied. First to the political class, and then to every one. The idea that anything you've ever done, at the drop of a hat 50 years down the line, will be brought back out to abuse you is going to shock the culture. Western culture is going to develop a new taboo very quickly and very soon. The treatment of JD Vance is going to be the first shot across the bow here.
We're seeing the emergence of post-digital culture and right now we're going through the growing pains. There's going to be a lot of changes in the very near future.
Agree! If you read Hillbilly Elegy, you’d know what a rough time Vance had growing up. Look at the man now - I found it more impressive, not less to know he persevered and was goofy as a kid. That wasn’t a salient feature of his childhood. Those days were pre-social media. This is so weak on the part of the media and of his “frens” - can you say envious?
the hollywood actors, or at least two of them that were in the movie, are now insulted
by him. Whaddddevverrr
Who specifically? I need more actors to dislike 😜
♥I am seriously running out of stuff to watch. Wish they would all just Dance Monkeys Dance! And keep their yaps shut about their politics. Ugh!
BREAKING: Teenager and friends caught having fun and being goofy.
🎯
I don't see a problem with the JD photo, a cis man and 3 trans men, or could be trans women, using an all gender can. How is it weird?
That’s it. He was pro-trans before there was trans.
I tell my kids constantly that their mom and I grew up in a time (teenagers in the 90's) where cell phone cameras and social media didn't exist. Truly liberating. You could F around and as long as no one snitched, you got away with it (IQ test for friend selection). When people talked and joked, they just said stuff. It either hit or it didn't. The audience was the filter. We didn't have Karens to control our speech. I grew up with migrant worker kids in WNY and we all hung together and the stuff they said about their own was freaking hilarious. We dished it to them too...but the expectation was that they could dish it back. And man, it was fun, and we were closer because of it. There was no state-approved representative there to tell us what we could and couldn't say. The things we said in 1995 would land us in jail today. But that trust to poke at each other stitches our society closer than what we have now. With the lines drawn, we don't trust each other to truly be who we are. It's sad.
9-11 changed us more than we really thought...the increase in government oversight in our daily lives, all for the sake of security, really laid the framework for the oversight into speech and actions we have today. Classic cooking the frog theory.
Plus, I really want to go to the gate again without a ticket...lol
I remind my kids often of how flying used to be. We need to preserve the memory of the good old days. 9/11 did change everything.
Those with Trump Derangement Syndrome are narcissists who are smarter than the rest of us. They will not listen to a rational discussion because they are so superior to us mere mortals. Unfortunately, narcissism is one of two mental illnesses that cannot be cured. (The other one is hoarders.)
eeek
you plucked a nerve there
I hoard sewing fabric. Okay I am working on it. Moving in 6 months
Moving every so often is the key.
I would like to move out of my house, then move back in.
I am wrangling with this, packaged my things up in boxes a year ago now. My move was delayed a year, but it was the only way I could really clear out and do deep cleans on the structure. We really are drowning in items, for the most part. Its been nice to wean it down to some essentials. Next stop, Waldens cabin.
It's a physical law of the universe: stuff expands to fill the available space.
I collect vintage Singers. The main problem is their size and weight. I can't help myself when they are selling for $1.00 at public sales.
Ha, funny you should mention that. I have a 1914 lotus design Singer I would sell, though I paid $100 for it. It works fine. You can contact me at my name all one word @protonmail.com. I am in Oregon.
there are a lot of those on the market. You could probably sell it locally. So nice to have an old machine.
"Can I fit this Tom Jones in the basement between my Billy Joel and my Bob Seeger? Argh! Such a deal though!"
The secret is to collect something small, like hatpins.
I have several. 3 feather weights, a 301A, a 316G and a 201
I have many more. you can have those :-)
No really, I also have a White machine with a walking foot almost always attached and set in my mother in laws fancy walnut dining table.... My house is great haha
"Can I fit this Tom Jones in the basement between my Billy Joel and my Bob Seeger? Argh! Such a deal though!"
I had to downsize. Now it is yarn and knitting supplies.
I'd rather be a hoarder tho...
To my credit I don't collect newspapers...
no, nor old bottles or tubes.
I used to figure skate back in the day and had a good skater friend that went to a house locally to visit and help a very obese friend, whose husband hoarded ... trash, old toothpaste tubes? caps cardboard etc
Is a hoarder like a private equity investor?
The Woke progressives are objectively evil. They get off on hurting innocent people.
True that.
TDS narcissists only believe they are smarter than the rest.
https://craignelsen.substack.com/p/breakthrough-narcissism-cure
I support the idea of a 2 X 4.
Now you are a woman I could hang with!
Thanks and no doubt.
I loaned a copy of Blazing Saddles to my physical therapist who was 40 some years younger than me.
The ironic comedy was lost to her. I thought it was simply generational, and she was overly sensitive. Now I think the overly sensitive was the warning I should have taken 10+ years ago.
Thank you for your thought initiating articles.
I loaned Napoleon Dynamite (gift from my teenagers way back) to my sister. She said, “I don’t get it.”
I think a person who lacks a sense of humor is a very sad thing
Without a sense of that which is ironic about our experiences and an innate appreciation for life's contradictions, there's not gonna be a sense of humour. Remember cartoonist Gary Larson's 'Far Side"?
My husband bought me his entire 2 volume book set The Complete Far Side Volumes 1&2. They must weigh 20 lbs. I went through each page, and let myself do like 5 per day. Took me a year to get through both books. Best gift ever. Hubs gets me.
Still relevant, still good.
Best ever.
Yes. Yes, I do Lol
I live in a Napoleon Dynaminte area. But the kids around here on the school buses would not scream when the farmer shot the cow by the side of the road. They would all just say "Looks like that is whats for dinner." Uncle Rico...I spot him in a lot of movies. Like Waldo.
To be fair, some of these movies really need to be watched in a group. Especially for a first experience.
I grew up on better off dead. I love introducing that movie to friends today.
Your mom goes to college...
♥
There are not progressives with humor.
Talking with my son (an aspiring comedian) yesterday about the Olympics opening ceremony, and I was saying, “yes, absolutely, we should be able to mock everything. But ignoring the context and intention, and gaslighting people about it, is disingenuous and corrupt. You wouldn’t make retard jokes at the opening ceremony to the Special Olympics, or tell pedophile jokes in the juvenile trauma group home.”
Him:
“Okay, so those are both hilarious.”
The Olympics opening ceremony took itself too seriously.
Gen X here. Sad for the fact that comedy and joy in general has been co-opted by the Scold Squad.
Looking back was much of it retrograde. Yes. Especially in high school.
So we laughed. Then we went out with our fake IDs and partied until last call, somehow dragged ourselves out of bed to get to school or work on time, then did it all over again the next day. Especially in college.
Thank you for continuing to be fun.
The left lost me when they stopped being funny. The harder they try to be "cool" and ingratiate themselves with everyone from furies to Haitian gangs the more boring they become.
That, and when they stopped being antiestablishment.
Abbie Hoffman is rolling in his grave. This year I'd consider voting for Pigasus with a Pat Paulsen veep while wearing my Spiro Agnew watch.
The left were never funny. They just convinced you that 'evil right-wingers hate people for no reason', and so you laughed at a construct that never existed.
Nobody hates people for no reason. Well, except leftists.
THE MUPPETS THO 🤣☠️
NSFW
A pleasure to be away from the uk right now. Dystopian Kier is doing his best to terrorise the residents of the country. Fortunately he will be gone one day. Meanwhile here is the USA msm is duking it out between harris and trump. Wow when did people choose to stoop this low on either side? It is ugly. Just here to help out family expecting a little boy today. Time to get back to normal, people. Stop allowing fools to terrorise, annoy, irritate and cause mayhem.
agree. Enjoy your visit.
We are living amongst "maroons"
♥ I put that in one of my Substacks and my son privately texted me and highlighted this, as he thought it was a mistake. I am like "No typo son. Just ask Bugs Bunny."
What did the Britbongs expect when they voted for a guy named Kier Stalin?
😂😂😂
In the 90's, one of my husband's and my favorite shows was Floyd on Food, a BBC production. Keith Floyd was a natural comedian and even though neither of us was a "foodie", we tuned in to every episode for the laughs.
I seriously don't think younger generations will ever understand what life was like for us GenX'ers. This was funny for us. And we certainly didn't get offended by it.
I keep waiting for the media to get around to discussing the issues currently affecting our lives. But it appears that they are hell-bent on prioritizing the past and ignoring anything relevant.
I wonder what historians will have to say about this current era. I can't imagine we'll be seen in a positive light.
Historians will never tell the truth about what has happened to our country during the last fifteen years. No one would believe it.
Susan: They’ll just assume “Idiocracy” was a documentary
Excellent observation!
This will be known as The Stupid Era. Entire curriculums will be devoted to teaching children what went wrong and how to avoid a repeat.
I propose future historians (as opposed to today's "hysterians") call it The Dork Ages.
Love it.
♥ You are a Bard.
The other day I was at my neighborhood cafe having a chat with some friends. I happened casually to use the word retarded. As in: "The Covid response wasn't science - it was retardation!".
And I noticed the 20-somethings in the cafe looked kinda shocked, like I'd just said something super edgy.
Have nothing to do with 20-somethings. It takes until they are 35 now to start to mature.
I recommend Lionel Shriver's book Mania.
When clothes and music from the 80s were the rage a few years ago, I told my high schooler that the 80s included an attitude of distrust for authority, not its embracement.