Art Imitating Life

On Tuesday night a man from Fergus Falls, MN was on Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show as the comedy guest. I always love when comedians are featured instead of bands.

This dude, Chad Daniels, was funny in a very generic way. He told jokes about his family in a cadence reminiscent of Jimmy Carr (who was also on Conan this summer, apparently), which worked. And while I laughed, this man has done nothing especially notable. He told jokes about how his children annoy him, how he wants to abandon them, and how they are idiots. Honestly, I liked it way better when Louis C.K. did it, like, ten years ago.

But, even so, it’s definitely worth devoting five minutes to enjoying, if only for the fact that he is from Minnesota and he was on teevee:

I would like to take a moment to pose a complaint about Jimmy Fallon on his television program, and then totally refute myself.

Have you seen Late Night with Jimmy Fallon? He sucks at interviewing! He doesn’t even let his guests talk. He just jokes around.

YES BUT

Have you ever seen a guest on a late night talk show? They are all vapid actors (save for Brian Williams, Al Roker, Will Ferrel, and Harrison Ford). They suck! Who wants to hear about the cute thing their baby did? Nobody, that’s who.

So when Jimmy Fallon takes over the interview–even if he is only mostly funny–and gets the three mentions of the movie or TV show in, I say good work. That is moving things forward in the late night talk show realm.

Another something has changed on the Internet, so wouldn’t you know it, everyone is upset. But the latest major Death of the Internet–the retweet reconfiguration–is a positive change. It is a positive change for more than one reason:

• It preserves the author’s intent by preserving their tweet exactly as they wrote it. How many times have you had to truncate someone else’s tweet to accommodate for their user name? The original tweeter picked their words carefully, and although it has become an accepted practice to remove select words to make room for retweeting superfluence, that’s actually terrible citation practice. As a writer, I love the preservation of intent.
• It draws attention to new personalities. More times than I can count I’ve scanned a tweet and replied to the person who posted it, only then to realize they were retweeting someone else. Putting someone else’s user picture, username, and full tweet in my stream forces me to pause and consider it, which is the (presumed) intent of the retweeter.
• It does not violate your personal space, so shut up. I’ve heard that some people find this new feature intrusive or otherwise violating of their personal Twitter space. This is total bullshit. Retweeting has been around since Twitter has been around and it was not considered a violation. Retweets have always been content in your stream put there by people you choose to follow. This has not changed in any way: the content is tagged as “retweeted by so-and-so.” Honestly. It’s the same thing.
• You add nothing of value to a retweet. Another major complaint about this change is that retweets are no longer able to be annotated. But here’s the thing: do you really add value when you add “love this” “check this out” or “smart” to a retweet? You do not need to add an extra text to endorse a retweet. You are retweeting it; that is an endorsement. And if you really need to add your own commentary within the tweet (have we forgotten there are venues for commentary outside of Twitter? Maybe you could blog it!), they did not somehow deactivate the old way of doing it. People will still know what you mean if you type “is this you in this video lol RT @username blah blah blah.”

I had a glass of Surly Darkness for the second time last night. I had had it once before and been truly unimpressed. But when our waitress came around and told us the non-”domestic” (don’t get me started) beer selection and we heard “Surly Darkness,” we all jumped and said “Yes! That one!” Including me. Even though I remember not caring for it.

And, once again, I had it and did not care for it. Because it is the Max Fischer of beers.

Surly Darkness could be good, but it tries to do too many things at once. I don’t even know what flavors I’m supposed to be looking for or experiencing. It has so many things going on that not one of them is done well by my tongue. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a hopstravaganza, if it’s supposed to be like drinking a loaf of bread, or if it’s supposed to have fruity/woody/spiced overtones. And I’m pretty sure the reason I can’t tell is because it does all of these things at full tilt.

So, Max Fischer of beers, I’m not going to say you’re bad. I’m just going to say I don’t think you’re good enough for me. But there are plenty of Margaret Yangs out there.

Spoiler alert: I saw the new Star Trek movie.

I was at work when I refreshed Twitter. Right near the top of my feed I could see that @vita_mn had said

Vita.mn invites you to BOLDLY GO… tonight at its premiere party for STAR TREK. 2 pairs of tixx available now. Email christian@vita.mn!

And ten seconds later I was in gmail. I wrote

I want them! How do I get them?

and was subsequently informed that I had already done all that was necessary.

And that was it. I had tickets to an advanced screening of a movie I’ve been anticipating for approximately three years. But not just an advanced screening–eight days before it comes to theaters. Seven days before regular people who win tickets get to see the “advanced” screening. In fact, according to Vita.mn, I am a taste maker. And my taste says this movie was fuckin‘ boss.

Better than Iron Man. And, yes, Better than the Dark Knight. (Note: I will not compare individual performances. Heath Ledger’s Joker was a villain for the ages and was–somehow–way above the rest of that film.)

I will not bore you with spoilers. Suffice it to say the film stays close enough to the spirit of Star Trek to satiate this canon-aware fan. No, that’s not right. I’m not just canon aware, but canon expectant. Ok, fine, here’s a minor spoiler: this movie breaks canon. But if you really care you probably already knew that, right? I won’t bother reviewing something you haven’t seen past saying it was even more badass and fun to watch than the ads make it look. I dare say it nearly surpasses both Star Trek VI and Star Trek: First Contact. Nearly. If you wanted to determine which was the best of the three, you’d probably have to toss all of them in the air and see which one landed closest to the center of a target that denotes quality. That is how good this movie was.

I’m going to hold off on full-on analysis of the movie until I see it again next week (and when everyone else has seen it). However, I would like to note the demographic makeup of the crowd who saw this movie with me. This screening was made up of people who were in the know (plus me, Emily, and the other two people who were fast enough to get tickets from Twitter) about this movie, according to Christian. The rest, apparently, was made up of people who know Christian and their plus-ones. This made for an interesting mix of people, broken out approximately as such:

55% obvious nerds

40% obvious hipsters (Seriously. Skinny jeans? Still?)

5% indistinguishable/me and Emily

All in all I am really happy to have won tickets to see this movie. I am a little rueful that I was unable to share the devirginization of this rebirth with my best friend and collaborator Donavon. However, I believe it was worth potential perceptions of betrayal to see one of the best, most exciting films I’ve seen in years.