For every Tony Award “Hamilton” wins tomorrow, I feel I should be allowed one month of not having to be aware of it in any fashion. On that note I would also like to reclassify “Under-Tale” as a Broadway show before Sunday.
If you don’t know what that is, then great. Really wonderful. I envy you. It is like Unlikely Friendship the home game. Except that I have to see junk about it constantly when dealing with the only people who will pay me for art. Essentially a dating simulation for furries, as best I can figure out without wanting to. An Earthbound-pastiche-looking-thing where your attacks inflict friendship instead of damage. Except it lies to you at first so you do regular damage and accidentally kill things you aren’t supposed to and then it remembers that forever even if you delete everything and start over. So I am told. Like that teaches you a lesson about responsibility except it doesn’t because people play video games as a respite from responsibility. And fine, there is room for that in the world, but it is not itself the world. That is like the kind of video game lope would play.
Meanwhile most of the people in my business about that have not heard of Hamilton, because that is more the domain of tv idiots. Internet shut-ins think there’s something noble about not watching a different electronic glow-box, even if all they do with theirs is watch and retweet and boost-signals or whatever. Somehow without my trying I am buried in hypey trashoganda for the sacred cows of both sides daily, and it has worn on me rather a bit the past nine months, more intensely than it previously did the past nine years, and as a consequence this thing I give birth to now is rather hopeless and misshapen.
With that said, you, by virtue of being here, have probably not heard of “Hamilton” either. Maybe you have but probably not. It is a Broadway stage musical play incorporating a bunch of people dressed like they are in the 18th century, without William “Mr Feeny” Daniels or the Quaker Oats mascot in it, dancing around on a stage rapping about it. That is all. It is a silly fantasy. I welcome people to enjoy it. But the wealth-drenched celebrities who control the television media want to promote it as an evening with God and oh your life is incomplete until you see it! But you can’t because Barack Obama and Beyonce and Chef Boyardee bought up all the tickets for years in advance because that is what is trendy now and they must keep up appearances. 60 Minutes has aired a report on it at least twice. The Jeopardy writer who makes sure there is always a clue about Les Miserables seems to have swapped them out with Alexander Hamilton trivia, and the cast of the show introduced a full category about themselves, and afterward Alexander Trebekilton reminded viewers to see it if they are ever in New York except they can’t unless they sell their house and a scalper manages to rob Prince’s vault. Stephen Colbert has mentioned it about 80 times. James Corden, whose program comes on after Colbert’s, has some recurring segment in which he drives around in a car singing karaoke with celebrities who presumably are paid for it and that’s its own sad statement on what passes for entertainment, but he did it with the Hamilton guy and then Corden was a guest on Colbert’s show and told a story almost in tears about how he was having dinner with Hamilton Guy and said he was so sad he couldn’t give Hamilton more than a Standing Ovation when he saw it live (which you can’t ever do). ABC World News tonight teased across several acts that Hamilton Guy was leaving the cast this month, and then the actual report was just that information again, plus a reminder that you’d better rush out to see him, except you can’t, ever, unless you are a driving a car he is singing karaoke in. All the tv shows that old white handicapped people that I look after watch love Hamilton, or mean to make me think they do. It’s disgusting. They did the same with The Producers, and Book of Mormon and to a lesser extent Spamalot (as it was inherently alot). Meanwhile, in the 60 Minutes report, Hamilton Guy (I think his name is Lin) himself said “I just wrote a play.” He thinks this is as stupid as I do. But he gets to be treated like Caesar and various other doomed heads of state prior to being killed so he’s not going to tell anybody to cut it out.
ALSO James Corden is hosting the Tony Award show, and it is advertised with the clip of Corden’s own show, in the car with Hamilton Guy, rapping about Hamilton, and then the voiceover says “will HAMILTON win the most awards ever?” So they’re not even pretending this isn’t a fetid self-fellating sham. I don’t even hate James Corden; I liked him in Into the Woods, despite the Disney company’s dedicated desire to present it as a serious non-musical that doesn’t conflict with their own rubbish canon of made up things they didn’t make up, plus my general fatigue with the “happily ever after OR IS IT” genre by the time that movie version got made. But I’ve had enough Jameses and Jimmies and Jams and Jellies on late night television whose foremost skill seems to be acknowledging that stuff exists. For his part, bimshwel all-star Jimmy Fallon has a recurring segment where him and celebrity guests just lip-sync to songs. He does Corden one better by not actually taking the trouble to sing the overexposed, possibly exact-same songs with his overexposed guests, and they all probably get paid eight times as much. It is a travesty that anybody should have to switch from NBC to CBS to see both of these spectacles the same evening.
And on the internet it is the same; a few highly visible dorks who get paid just to record their heads saying how great stuff is get in on some property or other and then decide to devote their existences to funding-hyping-homaging it, and all the sad empty-lived people who look to them for validation think: I will devote MY existence to this TOO. And then one day I wake up and magically there are 3000 drawings of a pillsbury-looking skeleton wearing a hooded sweatshirt standing around not doing anything. This reflects the sad emptiness of my own life as well, since I continue to be exposed to people I have no means of respecting, or who will never respect me, and without procuring myself a counter-benefit in trade.
When I was at the Department of Motor Vehicles (as seen in hype-haven’s own Zootopia!) last month I saw a child who looked to be about 12, accompanied by a parent/guardian/kidnapper, drawing Undertunders in a sideways-turned notebook. At least I think it was a notebook; half the characters were wearing horizontal striped shirts so it was hard to tell. If the Hamburglar took this opportunity to escape from prison nobody would notice. They were just standing together in a row. The adult glanced at the drawing and asked “you’re drawing Chinese kids?” Honestly when I was 12 I was drawing dumb old Kirbies and Ultroses and my parents didn’t care either, but there wasn’t an alternate support infrastructure in place encouraging me to keep on drawings those things and nothing else. The kid at chez dmv probably logged into tumblr and saw nothing else but Undertoodle for a solid month and now believes that is life’s true pursuit. And everybody always always makes sure to mention that underachievertale is copyright some mysterious figure named Toby. And before that it was ponies. And now it is tonies. The whole thing is phony (and forgive me if that left you groany). I give Alexander Hamilton credit for getting shot at the end so to limit the amount of fan-made sequel matter.
I would be surprised if you didn’t! Am I supposed to be impressed by that statement in itself? I made a thing! I drew a thing! I’ll just leave this here… I’m tired of wimpy fake-humble language. It speaks of a lack of effort, and facilitates the honoring of other lacks of effort. I saw a post like this that said “my husband made a game grumps animated!” and it had a link I disregarded. First of all why would you admit to having married someone whose most noteworthy accomplishment is that? “Game Grumps,” I have intuited –and I have to because everybody assumes everybody else already knows what they are talking about– is a pair of bearded men who are terrible at video games, and people are fans of them for some reason, and then put considerable effort into drawing cartoon versions of the men being terrible at video games. Because life has no meaning anyway so why bother faking it? Gone are the days when people smear feces on paintings and call it art. Now we smear feces on vomit and just leave it here.
I used to know a stubborn person, who, upon hearing a use of language he did not recognize, would fake giggle and then say “yeah no, that’s not a thing.” But what IS a “thing?” Calling something a thing is the definition of not defining it. You will not specify what is, so how am I to know what is not in advance of your smirking insincerity wanting to correct me? And then earlier this year I inadvertently shared a vicinity with a screening of Frozen and everybody in the movie talked like that, and some of them even fake-giggled like that.
And this is not me hating the generation after or before mine; it is people my age creating and perpetuating stuff now. People who, additionally, do not require or desire my skills or input. This culture is no dang good for me. I am coming to dislike real people merely because they like imaginary things too much. And they are happy, rather than me, so it is my problem, clearly. The time has come and lingered to stop talking about digging a hole and living in it; I may need to dig a hole and die in it if I continue being aware.
In all sincerity I don’t see the point of specially honoring something that has been honored incessantly in inappropriate venues for nearly a year already. I would prefer the Tony awards re-purposed to honor people named Tony. For example, the award for best Tony Danza would of course go to Tony Rosato.
It is that easy. Anthonies should not be permitted, however.
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Purplespace sez:
I shall pay attention to the Tony awards as much as I pay attention to the Emmy awards! As far as I can tell, Emmy is not named after John Emmy, nor does is it an acronym for something, but instead a nickname for a thing that they changed because they didn’t like the original nickname for the thing that didn’t even represent the thing they were renaming to being with.
chesse20 sez:
Undertale is a underfail. Just another coming of age story by Toby “Tumblr funny man” Fox. Kid goes through all the monsters and be friends with all of them because that’s how it should work in someone’s mind. If you don’t want to be friends with all the monsters then you don’t get to get the good ending and then you can’t find out about the super secret character that no one knows about. A poll on the undertale wiki shows that at least 25% of undertale fans have never actually played the game and only saw pewdiepie and his e-cousins play it in “let’s play”
Difficulty is really poorly balanced… Good ending has the easier bosses while the bad ending has the harder bosses and the better and more interesting dialogue where the characters don’t just talk about friendship and how much they love Japanese cartoons.
Frimpinheap sez:
Spack: I admire you ability to not pay attention! I have audio recordings of thunderstorms and large headphones that I can use to block out nonsense but they hurt my ears after an hour or so. But I suppose wanting to have no ears beats out wanting to have no pulse.
twent:
That is plenty more than I want to know! I would like very much to go back to not knowing.
I doubt the subject in question is a complete failure, but I doubt just as much that it is the soul-cleansing experience for all humanity it is presented as. The obsession with idolatry is very tiresome and exclusionary. It shouldn’t have to be a polarizing issue; it should be possible to find acceptance without acting like you love some popular thing or rounding up all the people who don’t.
Indighost sez:
test 1 2 3
Indighost sez:
Frimp, what large headphone do you use? I’ve blown through about 4 pairs of the Bose Noise Crancellers, $300 each and worth it each time. I do the same thing, falling asleep to sounds of nature such as [ [ A URL which your comment system has blocked ] . The only issue is that when I fall asleep with those headphones, I roll over on them, they break and I have to buy a new one for another $300. Still highly recommended.
Also yes, all underfail’s hate is 110% deserved.
Frimpinheap sez:
The comment system is lamentably fickle. There has been so much trouble with robot comments through the years that occasionally things which should not be blocked get eaten up, which is truly unfortunate because I need all the human help I can get.
http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=8323 Hey how did that link get through?
I believe this is the earphoner I have. Rather inexpensive! Perhaps that is why they hurt. It was imperative that I had one that accepted replacement cords because that part tends to get damaged rather easily and ruin the whole thing, with my ignorance how electronics work inside and inability to replace things unless they are designed to be replaceable.
But headphones in general hurt my ears; not from the noise, just from the physical proximity. Thankfully I do not need to sleep with them on my head! Only to keep my noises private when in the company of the machine which cannot otherwise be ignored, and increasingly to protect myself from knowing what it is saying.
Willful ignorance is a sad path, but it is becoming a matter of self-defense.
I have not played the underer and have no intention of ever doing so so it is not fair to say I hate it on its own merit. I just hate the world when I am around people who bow before it. One more irritating internet religion presented as if it is just good fun.
Indighost sez:
this is like my 53232154th attempt to post this link:
double-u double-u double-u dot archive dot org slash details slash wh086
http://www.archive.org/details/wh086
Frimpinheap sez:
I was being silly; Mine go through because I am the administroyer. There really there is no hope for anyone else, apparently. It doesn’t even work in the designated url field?
Indighost sez:
test456
Prescription Pudding Pinged With:
[…] conclusion, I am not going to watch television anymore. I said that before, probably, but I wasn’t considering network news in that mix, and some of this is left-over […]
Frimpinheap sez:
I know that! Find somebody who doesn’t know and ping them!
Prescription Pudding Pinged With:
[…] this was ultimately a positive step, since drawing this turned the Hamilton guy into a joke to me, so now when I, inevitably, see him, I think it is funny rather than […]
Frimpinheap sez:
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrf you tricked me again! I never know it is coming!
stop and frisk | borticulture Pinged With:
[…] broadcast because I based these drawngs on screenshots from it. also around the same time was a low budget video game full of characters wearing ugly striped shirts that I was seeing tiring, uninspired fan-wankery […]