Young Teen Girls Are Voracious, Culture-Destroying Monsters
As a rabid consumer of mediocre and bad media (movies especially ) I often find myself questioning the motivation of those who create and consume that media. Tonight I listened to Friday’s episode of Cort and Fatboy, with Friday guest Mike Russel, who routinely discusses bad and mediocre films. (Culture Pulp) They talked about Twilight: New Moon, which made me think about the success of the first film and why that happened.
Crazy Girl by Sharon Pruitt (cc:by)
First, a few facts. It’s well known that most mainstream media is garbage. Okay. That might be an opinion. Here’s a fact. Teenage girls who’ve reached menarche suddenly find themselves subject to the influence of large amounts of estrogen, thickening the endometrium and causing all kinds of other pretty, flowery things to happen. To the vast discomfort of our collectively sex-negative culture, this influences the young female with an impetus toward sexual activity. (This is not about my opinions on whether or not young teens should be having sex. I think that’s for them to decide. It’s about the biology.) So the result is a highly social creature, entering the fringes of preparation for an adult culture they have no experience with. This produces a sexually-driven taste for media which doesn’t necessarily have to be high quality in any other way. Enter Twilight, every boy band ever, and a number of other phenomena which may confuse someone of more discerning taste, someone with a much higher cognitive capacity than say, a person distracted by the wild hormones screaming through her young body for the first time.
This would be fine, if these things would stay snugly isolated in a cultural pocket to be ferociously consumed by the pubescent fires of this squealing subset of humanity. Unfortunately, money talks, as always, and once those numbers get up, no matter what demographic a piece of media appeals to, we’re going to be forced to hear about it, ponder it, make fun of it, etc.
Some adults find themselves dismayed by this. Especially vocal about their distaste are the young-men-not-getting-laid subset, who are not only infuriated and confused by women in general, but especially enraged by women of all ages cooing over some guy who’s way cuter than them up on the big screen. Never mind that the young man is probably not interested in vagina, or that he probably has a small penis, or any number of other issues. But while they’re gnashing their teeth down to stumps, trolling blogs, and getting their colons all tied up in knots, I’m laughing at these phenomena, at these girls, and at them, just like anyother ridiculous thing in our ridiculous existence. Tschuess!
Cort and Fatboy Return Tomorrow
Yes!
In case you’re in Portland and you’ve been living under a rock, or in case you’re not in Portland, Cort and Fatboy, radio personalities and podcasters, were fired from the Portland Station KUFO a couple weeks ago. The new ownership is deciding to go with a more “masculine” (read: moronic) image.
But I always listened to Cort and Fatboy on their podcast, and, starting tomorrow, I can continue to listen, because they’ve managed to pull it together and they’re going to start putting out shows again. I can’t wait to hear it!
Even if you don’t live in Portland, check out the show, they’re funny and sharp as tacks. TACKS. Ow!
UPDATE: Looks like the site is live and has the RSS feed with the old episodes on the main page now. Check it out: cortandfatboy.com
PDX Media Round-up! Popples! Vaginas!
Our Popples Must Be Local and Sustainable – Sam Adams appeared today on KBOO show Locus Focus to talk about issues of local, sustainable food production. However, because we’re 12, we thought the most important part of the entire program happened when he made a flub and said, “Popples.” when attempting to say that “things’ll be popping up.” (He was talking about local farms, you perv.)
Does the Mayor of Portland have a secret thing for 80’s plush toys that can hide in their back-mounted pouches?
local, sustainable food that Mayor Sam Adams has no interest in
Melissa Lion Wants Your Vagina To Smell Good – Also talking about local and sustainable food today is Melissa Lion. It’s right here on Recovering Californian! You’d better get those vaginas all smelling nice before you head out to BackFencePDX this Wednesday. If you’re wearing nylon panties, she can smell you from a mile away.
I’ve got a much shorter version of this hygienic primer for males. I call it, Wash Yo’ Dick and the entire content of the guide is right there in the title.
any minute now
I’ve been waiting to see what this pdx.fm thing is going to be like for days now. I just went to the site and they’re TEASING ME!
However, it looks like the “click to listen live” button at the top is working fine. Listening to something right now called Mantime.
Amy Troy Whut?
Congratulations to KGW’s Amy Troy who won an eating contest today to benefit the arts and athletic education. [ Oregon Media Central ]
I clicked on Amy’s bio link to learn more about her. Due to some kind of formatting mistake, I was greeted by something similar to the phrase Vonnegut uses to describe the American National Anthem, “gibberish sprinkled with question marks.” Anyone else get that?
(Breakfast of Champions. Multnomah Co. Library offers a downloadable audio version you can “check out”.)
Congratulations, Amy!
Tara Dublin and the Future of Local Radio
Today is a beautiful day for a walk. I just went down to the local currency exchange, up in Hollywood, to cash some checks. While soaking up the sun and shade, I listened to the PDXSucks podcast episode from this morning, featuring guest Tara Dublin.
I never listened to Tara when she was a host on KNRK 94/7, and I scarcely knew who she was until a few weeks ago. After reading some of her writing, and hearing her talk on Wagner’s morning show, it’s quite clear that whoever is behind KNRK is indeed clueless and he should be kicking himself in the head right about now. Tara is talented, magnetic, and smart, and a local radio station replaced her with automated music. (Something we all have in our pockets already, right?)
Tara contends, and I agree, that best thing local radio has to offer these days is local personality. Why would I want to listen to an iPod with no labels, interspersed with commercials, when I have thousands of commercial-free, streaming stations at my disposal? Why would I want to listen to any syndicated personality who lives thousands of miles away when I can pick and choose from any number of thousands of independently produced podcasts, (free to acquire, and commercial free) made by people who are unfettered from conservative, tight-lipped corporate control?
The only local radio station I listen to is KUFO, sometimes, (I’ll usually just check out the podcast.) because of local radio personalities Cort and Fatboy. Seems like Tara really hit the nail on the head here. If I’d fired her, I would be calling her up right about now, begging to have her back on the air. I’d be grovelling on my clueless, old, white guy knees.
Portland Media Lightning Roundup
Randy Leonard’s Blog – gets fun for a post only to go back to being boring, with nothing but links to Oregonian and KATU articles. But, damn. Check out this photo! Still utterly shocked that, after Randy’s big victory for MLS in Portland yesterday, that he doesn’t have a post featuring a huge soccer ball with “KICK ASS!!” written across it, or something like that.
I’m not sure why I expect a city commissioner’s blog to be interesting or entertaining, but come on, this is Randy! He’s the guy who brought us The Great Neon Rose!
Portland On The Road – PDX Freelance writer and event coordinator Melissa Lion is in Chicago for the BlogHer09 Conference.
Silicon Florist has a list of other Portland bloggers also in attendance at BlogHer. OurPDX co-founder and writer Dieselboi is on the road, too. According to his latest post on twitter, he’s in Kansas.
UPDATE!!!!! According to Dieselboi, he just crossed into Missouri!
Dieselboi is documenting his travels here.
The Thawed Auteur – Last week, after watching The Room (one of the greatest funny/bad movies ever made) at the In Your Water Command Center, Simplicity is Clarity writer @jarvitron wrote up this review of the film, in which he posits that auteur Tommy Wiseau is possibly an unfrozen caveman, as an explanation for Tommy’s bizarre, neurotic vision. We have to agree, he does look a bit like Hartman’s Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.
"Hello, friend. I am Tommy Wiseau."
PDXSucks Eats From the Tree of Pod-Death?
Instead of a show episode, listeners of local podcast PDXSucks were treated with the following image this morning, on a blog post entitled, “Silence.”
The post offers no further information. The date in the bottom left corner looms thick with finality, though, doesn’t it? I tried to reach Robert Wagner via twitter dm, but he’s said nothing as of yet. Is it just a prank. Did the patrons pull the plug on PDXSucks? Wha’s goin’ on? Throw us a goddamn bone here.
Some controversy occured recently around PDXSucks, bleeding over onto Oregon Media Central, initially incited by Wagner’s comments about Matt Davis and this post. However, I find it difficult to believe that a flame war, even one so intense as that, would spell the end for this show.
Portland Local Media Roundup!
Hello, cupcakes! Here are some very special things that happened in the Portland media last week.
Gay Rage is Cute
Portland blogger Byron Beck was “enraged” on the Cort and Fatboy show Thurs, July 2. Cort suggested that the homophobic recall clowns might actually have a small chance and caused Beck to fly into an alternately cute and ugly bout of stormy, gay fire. Byron delivered Cort a blow, of fury, calling him “Lars Larson,” and saying “You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about-” Poor Fatboy could barely get a word in edgewise, until he jumped in to end it all, when Beck snarkily said he’d have better things to do than listen to the podcast version. Ouch, Byron!
Things eventually calmed down, with Beck explaining that the mere mention of the chance of success gives the recall nudge (we like to call it a nudge) plausibility. And that Cort “ran with it like a little wild pony.” Aww.
Jasun Wurster was nowhere in site to give out his phone #, as he usually does when anyone in Portland says the word, “recall”. We hope he’s okay.
Podcaster Hates Matt Davis and His Attention Grabs, Podcasts About Them
Ironically-named, fledgling podcast Portland Sucks (13:30) took a little trip to The Portland Mercury’s Blogtown on Friday. Robert Wagner, described by the show intro as the “sultan of scandalous sarcasm”, loves MLS, and hates Matt Davis! Davis drew Wagner’s ire with his Blogtown post, “Rape Allegations: Another Side Effect of Big Soccer?” causing Wagner to bring out the big guns in his description of Davis as a “weasely, inept piece of dog poo.” Scorcher!
Wagner suggested that Davis is just trying to get attention with erroneous, bad headlines, while devoting 8 minutes of a 30 minute podcast to Matt Davis. He then went on to talk about how tired he is of Beau Breedlove getting media attention. Clearly, he is the Imam of Irony.
Local Ad Firm Pisses Off Cyclists to Show They’re Awesome, BikePortland.org Implodes
Portland big marketing delivered a blow to, well, Portland last week. Webtrends did up the side of a max train with the question “Should cyclists pay a road tax?” in order to start a dialogue whip the Portland cycling community into a rabid frenzy/ self-promote. Meanwhile, cyclists declared a cease fire in the raging Bike vs. Car War so they could sit on their computers, making angry comments on BikePortland.org, where Jonathan Maus’s editorial on the subject has 139 comments, as of this posting.
Meanwhile, Webtrends had this to say, “Neener, neener, neener! We’re fuuuuckin’ awwwsome!” Okay. Maybe they didn’t say exactly that, but I’ll bet that’s what they were thinking. (Please don’t sue us.)
Leave Sam Adams A-LONE!
Leave him aloooooooooooone!!!
He had good reason to lie. He’s going to be a good mayor. And I’m happy he lied, because if he hadn’t, he might not have gotten elected. He lied about a very personal issue, that was no business of the press’ anyway.
Now the press has a witch hunt against him. They want to make an example of him to show it’s unacceptable to lie to them about anything. I don’t agree. I think it was acceptable. I don’t think everything works in black and white.
The Portland media is running a genuine smear campaign against him and it’s just sad. Now, if it happens to come out that Mr. Breedlove wasn’t 18 when they first did the nasty, that’s a different story, but as for now, LEAVE HIM ALONE!
