God. Dammit.

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 12 Comments

Representative Anthony Weiner, in jacket, shirt, tie and socks, waits for Ronnie to set up the shot.

Hey—what do Brett Favre, Kanye West and Anthony Weiner have in common? They’ve all distracted us from critical problems in American politics and culture. Also, they’ve all conducted peer-reviewed experiments proving that becoming rich and/or famous does not make your penis larger. It also doesn’t make you smarter. Yesterday, Representative Anthony Weiner (D–NY) announced that yes, it was a picture of his boxer-briefed semi sent to that woman on Twitter, and yes, he sent it. That previous story about how a hacker got into his Twitter and sent a mysterious picture of someone’s dick to one pretty girl from his followers list? Yeah, saying that was a bad idea. Come to think of it, that was probably the second worst idea Anthony Weiner had all month.

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A theory of taste: fantastic naturalism

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 6 Comments

First, I’m warning you right now that there is going to be way less Combat! blog than you want this week, yet way more than I actually have time to write. Here’s a pro tip for all you freelancers out there: tell everyone you’re going on vacation. I have received more projects labeled “emergency” since I went on vacation than I had previously gotten in my entire career. The next time you see me, I will be wearing a panda skin monocle. Second, the Theory of Taste promised in the headline is not the useful kind of aesthetic theory. It is a theory of my taste, which is notoriously bizarre. Ready? Yesterday, while inflicting an interpretive rendition of a cartoon I had seen six years ago on my brother, who has long since reconciled himself to such tortures, I realized that there is a through-line in much of the animated humor that I like: ultra-naturalistic dialogue and voice acting in the context of fantastic situations. I think that cartoons in which monsters, superheroes, space cowboys and other fantasy characters have to live in apartments and work at jobs are hilarious. Those of you once forced by the pursuit of English degrees to read the execrable Gabriel Garcia Marquez are familiar with the literary genre known as magical realism, in which key aspects of human consciousness go unaddressed in favor of love turning women into butterflies. That sucks. But what does not suck is the style of humor that I’m going to call Fantastic Naturalism.

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“Bill, I know football, man”

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 10 Comments

I spent the hours before the Super Bowl stuffing wings in my mouth as fast as I could, so I missed this Fox News interview with Barack Obama conducted by Bill O’Reilly. That’s probably just as well, since the sight of me sputtering wing bits onto the screen was best left for, um, the first interception.* A lot of people are afraid to interrupt the President of the United States so they can finish his sentence, but O’Reilly is not a lot of people. He is one irritatingly smug person, who responds to an invitation to the White House by saying “I don’t want to ruin the party for you guys” and routinely follows the President’s opinion by offering his own. After Obama finishes explaining his position on the Muslim Brotherhood’s participation in a representative Egyptian government, O’Reilly adds, “Those are some bad boys. I wouldn’t want those guys anywhere near the government.” Somehow, the President manages not to say, “Maybe that’s why no one ever elected you to do anything, you jackanapes.” The whole interview is a study in restraint, except for one moment near the end. After he has been accused of socialism—after he has been told that his close friends think his personality has changed and asked if it bothers him that people hate him—the President loses his composure when O’Reilly suggests that he doesn’t understand football.

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Google Veterans’ Day image causes imaginary controversy

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 3 Comments

Google's logo from Veterans' Day. This is step one in my plan to convince people that my blog is actually Google. Step three is profit.

In the course of your Veterans’ Day celebrations—going to the bank, realizing from the sign on the front door that it was a holiday, going directly to the liquor store, experiencing a period of missing time, then coming back to some dude in a pointy helmet shouting “nein! nein!” from your headlock—you might have forgotten to check Google. Even if you did check the Google on Thursday, you might not have noticed that its special Veterans’ Day logo was, in fact, an Islamic crescent rising behind the American flag. That may be because the infiltration of Islam in American society is so pernicious that you never notice until it’s too late, or possibly because you have seen the letter “e” before. Either way, you have to agree that Google Veterans Day Controversy: American Flag, Islamic Crescent Moon Doodle Sparks Internet Outrage. That’s how Associated Content’s William Browning sees it, anyway. Props to Mike for the link.

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