wear me like a locket around your throat

01. on my way home from starbucks/the store just now, i was driving on a little street near my house and i hit a red light. however, by the time i was actually sitting at the intersection, the sun was shining brightly RIGHT next to the light, and no matter how i tried to shade my eyes and hold up a hand, i seriously couldn't tell if the light was red or green. and there's not enough traffic to be all "oh, the cars coming that way are stopped", and it's a one-way street so i couldn't just wait for people coming toward me to go. so i just waited until i figured it was probably green, took a deep breath, and went for it. NOT FUN. D:

02. is kyle peek a father?!?! O.O

03. i have some thinky thoughts about, of all things, seinfeld. well, not so much the show itself, but like...okay. scott loves seinfeld. he thinks it's hilarious, and i realize he is not alone there. i don't necessarily find it un-funny, i guess. i mean, i usually see the jokes coming a mile away, but there are funny moments, and i get a kick out of the concept that it's a show about nothing, and their treatment of the minutiae of daily life can sometimes be quite clever.

however, i've never been able to really enjoy the show, because i find all the characters to be kind of douchebaggy. like, they're all eccentric and whatever, and that's fine, but they're all so inherently selfish and self-involved that it bothers me. and, i mean, i have a long history of loving the "bad" characters on tv shows, from logan echolls to alex karev to chuck bass (with plenty of other stops in-between) but they almost always have an underlying humanity that i think the seinfeld cast does not.

scott thinks i'm ridiculous, and that you don't have to be able to empathize with characters in order to enjoy a show, but i disagree, i think because i rarely watch (or read) things for the plot. 9 times out of 10, i watch the shows i watch for the characters, and i read the books i read for the prose. not to say i don't appreciate a good plot twist or a cliffhanger or just a well-crafted story, but that's rarely my main concern.

now, i know comedy is a different beast than stuff like gossip girl or whatever the hell else i watch, but i think most comedies have characters that are, well, likable, and with whom people can identify, whether it's jim halpert or liz lemon or ted mosby or whatever. scrubs was on the the other day, and scott said he thinks the characters on seinfeld are more likable than the characters on seinfeld. which, i disagree, but i can vaguely understand why he might say that. i mean, JD is not necessarily a great guy. he can be mean, and selfish, and generally kind of weak. but again, there's humanity there, i think. and dr. cox, for all his rage and bluster, has a good heart underneath. (mind you, i haven't actually watched scrubs in a couple of years, so i'm basing this off the first 3 or 4 seasons.)

all of that ^^^ to say, i suppose: what makes a character someone you can relate to/empathize with/enjoy? do you need characters like that to enjoy a TV show? do you agree with me that the characters on seinfeld are unlikable assholes, or have i got it all wrong?

04. david fucking cook having a gigglefit! everyone who cares probably saw this already but you can watch it again. ♥


ETA 05. also, this.

XD *icons*

i'm not a john mayer fan. i used to kind of hate him, for some reason that i can't remember. but then i noticed that he's kind of hilarious sometimes, and he collaborated with fall out boy, and he's kind of hot. so. i'm still not a fan, per se, but i like him well enough.

anyway, disclaimer aside, thecowboycliche posted this blog he wrote in her journal and i really loved it, so i'm reposting it here so a) i'll have it, and b) maybe some of you will read it and appreciate it as well. it's kind of long, so i put part of it under a cut, but i left most of it out because, idk, i thought it was just that rad, i guess. i bolded my favorite part, because it rang so true for me.

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2008
FROM THE HEART....

( I need to write this. )

This is about us all.

This is about a level of self consciousness so high in my generation, that it's actually toxic.

This is about the girl in her bedroom who poses in front of the camera she's awkwardly holding in her outstretched hand. She'll take a hundred photos until coming up with one she's happy with, which inevitably looks nothing like her, and after she's done poring over images of herself, will post one on her myspace page and then write something like " I don't give a f*ck what you think about me."

This is about the person trying out for American Idol, who while going off about how confident they are that they were born ready to sing in front of the world, are trembling so badly they can hardly breathe.

This is about me, the guy who walks through a throng of photographers into a restaurant like he's Paul Newman, but who leaves a "reject" pile of clothes in his closet so high that his cleaning lady can't figure out how one man can step into so many pairs of pants in a week.

This is about a young guy who maintains a celebrity blog that subsists on tearing other people down but who has wrestled with a lifelong battle for acceptance as a gay man.

This is about us all. Every one of us. Who all seem to know deep down that it's incredibly hard to be alive and interact with the world around us but will try and cover it up at any cost. For as badass and unaffected as we try to come off, we're all just one sentence away from being brought to the edge of tears, if only it was worded right. And I don't want to act immune to that anymore. I took the biggest detour from myself over the past year, since I decided that I wasn't going to care about what people thought about me. I got to the point where I had so much padding on that, sure, I couldn't feel the negativity, but that's because I couldn't feel much of anything. And I think I'm done with that.

I'm not the first person to admit we're all self conscious, Kanye was. But what I want to do is to shed a little light on why we're all in the same boat, no matter the shape of the life we lead: because every one of us were told since birth that we were special. We were spoken to by name through a television. We were promised we could be anything that we wanted to be, if only we believed it and then, faster than we saw coming, we were set loose into the world to shake hands with the millions of other people who were told the exact same thing.

And really? Really? It turns out we're just not all that special, when you break it down. Beautifully unspectacular, actually. And that truth is going to catch up with us whether we want to run from it or not. The paparazzo following me to the gym ain't gonna be Herb Ritts and the guy he's following ain't gonna be Bob Dylan. It's just a matter of how old you are once you embrace that fact. And for me, 30 sounds about right.

What now, then? I can only really say for myself: Enjoy who I am, the talents and the liabilities. Stop acting careless. In fact, care more. Be vulnerable but stay away from where it hurts. Read. See more shows. Of any kind. Rock shows, art shows, boat shows. Create more art. Wear hoodies to dinner. Carry a notebook and hand it to people when they passionately recommend something and ask them to write it down for me.

Root for others.

Give more and expect the same in return, but over time.

Act nervous when I'm nervous, puzzled when I don't know what the hell to do, and smile when it all goes my way. And never in any other order than that.

And when it's all over, whether at the end of this fabulous career or of this life, which I hope takes place at the same time, I should look back and say that I had it good and I made the most of it while I was able. And so should you.

I'm going quiet now.

John