Media Madness

Tim's Favorite Blogs

The Weather
Ruffle Your Shuffle
Eschew Obfuscation
IM Earthling
Silk Road
The Huffington Post
Talking Points Memo
American Progress
Citizens For Ethics
Crooks And Liars
Common Cause

Media Matters

Blog Directories

Monday, September 5. 2011

Be More Snarky

It’s not often I actually read a San Diego Reader and I often wonder if anyone else actually reads it, other than the author, a couple editors and possibly a few disinterested staffers with nothing better to do than read the weekly publication that pays them a meager wage.

The ads are always interesting of course, if you have penchant for looking at HOT women in skimpy bikinis hawking everything from weight loss programs to breast augmentation: “The perfect body you’ve always wanted.”

I’m all for women getting their breasts augmented, if that’s what they want to do. It’s hard going through life feeling “less than” about anything, especially women who are judged so thoroughly and harshly about their physical appearance.

Men too, but not nearly as much or as harshly. A man with material means or even just a good sense of humor can make up for a lot, or little, as the case may be. Not so women. Their looks, first and foremost, are how they are judged. That’s a reality, right or wrong. It’s how the cosmetic and fashion industries are able to get away with so much year after year, nay, season after season.

So, if a woman wants to get bigger boobs from the doctor in the ad on page 34 of The Reader, by all means, do so. And if a woman has accepted her natural breasts, well that’s great too. A woman’s breasts are lovely things to hold, big or small.

Here’s something funny about men and tits. Besides man-tits. I belong to an online forum for fans of Playboy, in print and online. People of all sorts, many of them dirty old men, frequent the forums, looking for love in this exactingly wrong place. Many of them like to make snarky comments about the men who get friendly with the models, which is one of the main, if not the main, attraction of being a member of this online community: “meeting” the women we lust after, if only in an electronic, I’m only touching myself sort of way.

Here’s the funny thing that’s related to breasts and breast augmentation: there are cadres of men who vociferously rail against women getting implants. The lamentation can be so melodramatic it’s absolutely entertaining! Better than daytime soaps. “She’s ruined!” That one always makes me chuckle at least. It’s also used when someone laments tattoos and different body piercings — even in the bellybutton, which I’ve always considered attractive.

Sometimes we’ll read some poor lost soul mournfully relay his sad disappointment about a nude woman with breast implants featured on the site: “At least she didn’t totally ruin herself by getting tattoos.” I feel your pain brother. Doctors have pills to arrest that feeling of impending doom.

But it’s funny because some of these very same men beating the drum against women with breast implants appearing nude on a website like Playboy.com will jump in the air and do virtual cartwheels when a woman with large “natural” breasts becomes a Playboy model, especially a Playmate. One guy even considers it an “achievement.” Really?

It’s like saying Paris Hilton has achieved greatness simply by being born a Hilton. Everyone knows her great achievement was becoming a public figure by doing absolutely nothing but look pretty in front of all the right cameras — and appearing in a self-made sex tape. That girl knows Dick and I’m not talking about Clark.
 Oh, I almost forgot that Carl’s, JR drippy cheeseburger ad! HOT DAMN! I almost started going to Carl’s, Jr. after that!

On one hand these guys decry women with breast augmentation, but on the other declare women with big breasts to be the best. So, what’s a woman to do, if she’s looking to be a part of the modeling world? Hell, if she just wants to be noticed in her little part of the world?

Everybody knows men across the spectrum prefer big breasts on women, especially men who pay for magazines and websites like Playboy and Penthouse, not to mention Twistys, Hustler and a multitude of other sites that feature adult entertainment.
 Did you ever wonder why simple nudity is considered “adult” entertainment? Apart from the religious issues, there really doesn’t appear to be any logical reason.

So, as long as the world prefers women to have big breasts there will always be a need for plastic surgeons who can deliver salvation in a silicone or saline implant.

After all that I just remembered this wasn’t intended to be about women and breasts. The initial subject was actually reading the San Diego Reader.

But a few more things about the ads. Because of the cover story, I’ll presume, there were a lot of ads for various treatments for mental diseases, like schizophrenia. Then of course there are the ads for medical marijuana and a first, for me anyway, an ad that asked, “Are you smoking too much pot?”

For the past 30 years I’ve known a person can smoke too much pot. I did for years! But the old myth about marijuana is it isn’t addictive or harmful to one’s health. Two complete falsehoods that the legalize marijuana crowd hangs its argument on in its campaigns. Pot should be legal for the same reason alcohol is legal: an adult should have the right to choose what he or she consumes, be it 4,000 calorie meals at fast food establishments, tobacco products, a quart of whisky or an ounce of pot a day. Clearly, the War on Drugs isn’t working, so it’s time to legalize all of them.

After nearly 20 years of living in San Diego I can’t remember reading a cover story, from beginning to end more than twice Maybe three times, but that’s just a wildly liberal guess. My memory ain’t what it used to be and after nearly 20 years, there might be some that caught my attention at the time, but like most other things, faded from memory.

Shortly after first arriving in San Diego in June, 1992, someone suggested I try writing for that publication. So I looked into it first thing. I even ran into a writer who was often published in The Reader. Can’t remember his name now, but he lived somewhere close to Balboa Park and as it turns out, he was taking more prescriptions for mood disorders than I knew existed.

So, I wrote some reviews of CD’s that had been recently released — this was before downloading and streaming young’uns — and sent them off via snail mail (this was before readily available e-mail) confident in my mission to become a writer extraordinaire living in the comfortable confines of Southern California. Sort of like a screenwriter, but without all the angst.

Well, them fuckers rejected it saying it wasn’t quite their “style,” which had to be more about the writer and less about the band and music. “Be more snarky,” I was told. Apparently being “snarky” is a compliment for some people.
 “Snarky,” as defined by the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: 1: crotchety, snappish
 2: sarcastic, impertinent, or irreverent in tone or manner

But you know, I can relate. Shortly after moving here, my oldest brother Carl, may he rest in peace, once said to me, “You are the most arrogant prick I’ve ever met!” Wow! I was so complimented! That was an accomplishment to be proud of, hands down! I couldn’t understand why, when I told people about that, laughing and proud of myself, they just looked at me like I’m weird.

It wasn’t until years later that I began to understand being an arrogant prick wasn’t an achievement one should be proud of. Pride, the ancient saying goes (somewhat), leads the Seven Deadly Sins for a reason. I think there are only five, maybe six, deadly sins, but that’s for another day.

Fast forward about 18 years and here we are in 2011 and The Reader, not quite as thick as in years past, is still finding its way into my now old and cold sweaty hands. I don’t really read it, as much as scan a few of the articles, maybe read a page of the cover article and mostly check out the ads for the live music clubs, what’s left of them, to see if any interesting bands are playing. And there are a few.

The writing can be really boring to be honest. There’s only so much “snarky” one can take and if every writer is writing as if they’re the best thing to ever hit the literary establishment writing about whatever extremely small niche they are into — eh, who gives a fuck. If you, as a reader, continually don’t get the steady stream of inside jokes — and most potential readers don’t — it’s just another boring exposé of the writer’s otherwise dreary life. Sort of like reading this blog from time-to-time.

So, today, while at the local Vons I picked up a copy of the most recent Reader and looked at the interesting cover. “I’m Here to Save You From Protestant Hell” it said in a picture of a Willy Wonka-looking fellow with a big smile on his face in front of a river of chocolate.

Hmmm, an article about saving someone from a Christian religion, that sounds promising! Well, as any good headline will do, this one barely touched the deeper subject of the story: a young woman’s journey through life in a broken family with a drug-addicted schizophrenic father who eventually abandoned her to that Protestant Hell.

There won’t be any details of the story, written by Brianna Van Ness, divulged here. You ought to read it yourself, but it was the first cover story in The Reader to capture my attention for the entire story since … shit, can’t even remember that last time. That’s all a cover story need do anyway is capture the attention of the reader for that moment. If it gets remembered beyond that, well so much the better.

The question I ask myself now is this: is my writing snarky and self-indulgent enough to make it into The Reader? I’d have to write about 10,000 words, which is easy enough. I can string along enough bullshit to fill the cover story space of The Reader. Anyone can do that and often enough that newsweekly proves it. But can I find a subject substantive enough to be interesting to more than just my small circle of friends? Of course!

But, what the editors might not like are freewheeling tangents and anyone who has made any effort at reading this blog over the years knows tangents are my thing. Hell, this particular blog is one big tangent. Originally it was to be about a bureaucratic hell I’ve been dealing with all summer. Now that’s put off for another day!

Hell, I’m not even getting the ads by Google anymore so this is truly a labor of love. Google Adsense dropped me for an as yet unnamed offense. Probably the hotlinks to the hot chicks sans clothing. Who knows. But now it’s time to think about writing something for The Reader. I’m finally over the resentment of being snubbed all those years ago. And I’ve become pretty darn snarky too!

Posted by Tim Forkes in Media Madness at 12:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

(Page 1 of 27, totaling 27 entries) » next page