I've read quite a bit from him, and I really, really love his writing style. He can make everything interesting, and to this day I still have the 23 Questions I Ask Everyone I Meet In Order to Decide if I Can Really Love Them on my facebook page, and had people answer it all the time. That part of him is really fun. And really, that's what he does well, he asks some though provoking questions and makes interesting navel-gazing connections and seems to really be in touch with some parts of human nature that connect us all to things in a fun, hypothetical way. My gripe, though, comes from what seems to happen when he doesn't like something or forgets that's he's funny and whimsical, where he suddenly starts writing like he's a really profound, philosophical writer. He becomes extremely condescending and holier-than-thou. For example, look up any of his opinions on punk music. He doesn't just say he doesn't like this thing, it becomes the worst thing to ever happen since Hitler, and if you like it, you a half-donkey shit baby who has no part in our society and how can you be so fucking stupid to have a differing opinion to I, arbiter of culture who knows all. His writing stops coming off as navel-gazing self-aware ridiculousness and starts coming off as someone trying to pass this off as academic. But I still love reading his work. He's a hack, but a fun hack. It's just when I get to those points, it makes me need to take a break from him a while because it sours everything around it. He also has a bad habit of not really making his point very well, and, really, it's not too important most of the time. This article, for example, he circles around a few times and his real point here he ends up making is the cultural significance of Seinfeld, because it's popular satire, so nothing really groundbreaking there. But he frames the article around his point that it's villainous, but doesn't really stick with that, or why it's important, or why it's villainous compared to other shows with bad people as main characters. It just kinda falls away into his writing. I am interested, however, in how his fiction work is. I can see it really going either way.
1. It depends very much on outside variables, but to follow the bent of the question -- no. 2. Again, some research into who exactly I would be freeing might be prudent, but to follow the bent of the question -- yes. 3. Hitler's skull. But I've always kinda wanted a turtle. My roommates have a bearded dragon right now (vaguely similar sort of pet, not sort of animal) and I enjoy it immensely. So I might be prodded into picking up a turtle after I put the skull up. 4. Nope -- oh, the Raiders? Eh why not. 5. Yeah, I mean I'd spend an obsessed 2.99 years listening to seven albums a day, but obviously in the end the pill. 6. No. Not out of a sense of shame but because the whole shebang sounds like too much trouble. 7. One of the animals, probably, depending on the circumstances and what the new species actually are. But of course if I'm practical and don't want to get fired, the president gets first billing. The front page of the Times is a big ol' space, though... 8. Nope. Although that's a brilliant question. Tops the Alice in Chains one considerably. 9. No clue. I'd prefer to go bi... 10. N/A. 11. Finish the movie. 12. I'm fine without, but I think I might pay him to do someone else out of curiosity. 13. The novel that influences 30 percent of readers into homosexuality, of course. 14. Ha! 15. Writing a journal. 16. Of course not. I'm going to make fate try a little harder than that. 17. This one's kind of meaningless. Skip. 18. Is that even worth...? 19. This is a situation that would almost certainly never arise without the influence of alcohol, so making an excuse probably wouldn't even be necessary. I'd let 'em get me back. 20. Neither. In that hypothetical, wouldn't I be the one person who couldn't get much out of either movie? 21. Probably a couple of years earlier (again out of curiosity) just to see what it would've been like with that one girl from high school who got away etc.
22. The debt, I suppose. 23. I'd feel weird. Well, anyway. Where am I?