Details, Details, Details

March 21, 2013June 26, 2023 RilalyLeave a comment

Epiphanies, like women, can pop up when you least expect them, and they can free you from a troubling part of your life you didn’t understand as a problem until they were revealed. Most of us learn if we’re multi-taskers, optimistic, outgoing, genuinely funny, and/or thick-skinned to those who label us otherwise. Isn’t it interesting when a “That’s me!” pops up that teaches us more about ourselves than we know before.

In a PBS documentary on Mark Twain, a number of incidents arose in the building of Twain’s home, and the construction team began “badgering” Twain with questions regarding how he wanted them handled. The questions regarded the construction of his home, a place the older Twain would presumably live in for the rest of his life, so the observer should forgive the construction crew’s chief for the badgering. The team didn’t know how he wanted some particulars of his home constructed, and they probably had hundreds of questions for him. What the team did not know, however, was that Twain had an oft expressed aversion for details.

“That’s me,” I thought. If I were to construct my own home, I can see myself going “all-in” on the big, meaningful constructs. I can see myself all-in on the design, and some of the details. I can see myself all hopped up in the beginning, acutely focused, and knocking out every question with pinpoint answers. I would consider other perspectives, others’ advice. I would probably read books, watch YouTube videos, and gather as much information as possible to make an informed decision. At some point, and no one knows when this point hits, I would begin to shut down. It often happens soon after the this-and-that questions hit the floor.

“Do you want this or that?”

“I’ll take this.”

“Are you sure, because that offers a this and that.”

“OhmiGod, just gimme that then.”

“It’s your house,” they say. “We just want to make sure you’re getting what you want.”

“I understand. Give me that.”

Details, regarding otherwise inconsequential minutiae, make me feel stupid. These details start firing far too many neurons in my brain for me to handle, and I often get overwhelmed and exhausted by them. I know that I should be listening to every question, and I feel guilty for not being able to ponder all of the details they give me to come up with the ideal solution for my family, but my capacity for such matters is limited. When the flood of this-and-that questions hits, I’m completely out of gas. “Whatever, just get it done!” I’ll fall away from the creative to what is expected, and what it is that those still paying attention want. My answers going, forward, are autonomic. “Yes, that sounds fine,” I’ll say without knowing the question. I’ll just want the damn thing to be built already by that point, because I’m not a details-oriented guy. I’ll want to make the big decisions, but I’ll want to leave all of the “inconsequential” details-oriented questions to others.

I feel guilty. I want to be involved, informed, and constantly making acutely focused decisions throughout the process. I feel guilty when others start making the decisions that affect me, because I know I’m an adult now, and I should be making all these decisions. There is also some fear that drives me to constantly pretend that I’m in prime listening mode, based on the fact that I may not like the finished product if I’m not involved in every step. I may not like, for example, the manner in which the west wing juts out on the land and makes the home appear ostentatious, or obtuse, or less pleasing to the eye with various incongruities, and I’ll wish I would not have been so obvious with my “Whatever just do it!” answers. Details exhaust me, though, and they embarrass me when I don’t know the particulars that the other is referencing.

I don’t know if the guilt is borne of the fact that I know I’m an intelligent being, and I should be able to make these decisions in a more consistent manner, or if I’m just too lazy to maintain acute focus. I do have a threshold though, and I know how my brain works. I know that if there are seven ways to approach a given situation, I will usually select one that falls in the first two selections offered. I usually do this, because I’m not listening after the second one. Everything beyond that involves the other party showing off the fact that they know more than I do. I know this isn’t always the case, but it’s the only vine I can cling to when having to deal with my limited attention span and the limited arsenal of my brain.

Knowing my deficiencies for retaining verbosity, I will ask for literature on the subject that provides the subject a tangible quality that can be consumed at my pace. If I do that, and I have, I will then pretend to read every excruciating word, but I will usually end up selecting one of the first two selections offered. Companies know the predilection we have to choose the first one or two selections, and they pay search engines to optimize their place in searches. We might envy the person who knows enough to know that selection #7 is the ideal company for this job, but we know we’re not that guy.

I like to think I have a complex brain. I like to think that I display all that I’m about in my own way, but I’m always reminded of the fact that most of the people around me give full participation to the details of life no matter how overwhelming and exhausting they can be to me. It’s humbling to watch these brains, I like to consider inferior, operate on planes of constant choices, and decisions, and retentions, and details I am incapable of retaining.

I have this daydream that I will one day be given an excuse for having such a limited brain by the relative brilliance I reveal to the world in the form of my book. I am interviewed in this dream, and I am asked, “So, what does it mean to you to have crafted such a fine book?” I am far wittier than reality would suggest in this dream when I reply: “It will help me deal with all of my faults better. The fact that I cannot fix my own plumbing, can now be countered with, but I wrote a fine book. The fact that I cannot fix my own car, compete with my wife in certain areas of intelligence, or hold down a decent job can now be countered with, but I wrote a book that is held up as a fine book in certain quarters.”

We’ve all heard the line “Everybody’s mind works differently,” but until we learn something regarding the fact that the brilliant mind that composed Huckleberry Finn has similar deficiencies, we cannot help but feel guilty about them. “Well, work on your deficiencies,” those around us suggest, and we do when that next project comes about. We’re out to prove ourselves in that next project. We answer every question, from the first few to the this-and-thats, with prolonged mental acuity. When that third and fourth project rolls around, however, we’ll revert back to those inferior brains that can’t retain details, and it is then that we’ll envy those “inferior” brains, consistently showing their superiority. This could lead those of us that never knew we were suffering from such a recognized deficiency into feelings of incompletion, until someone like Mark Twain recognizes and vocalizes his defeciencies for us.

Impressions and Loopholes in the War for More

March 19, 2013September 21, 2015 RilalyLeave a comment

Have you ever met that person that gets every joke they’ve ever been told and knows the answer to every trivia question put before them? We’ve all met people that specialize in an area, and we’ve all met those that take that to the extreme and accidentally develop tunnel vision for that specialty. There are others that appear to know a little something about everything but specialize in nothing. Then you have those rare individuals that appear to specialize in knowing everything about everything, and no one can trip them up on anything.

This façade didn’t bother me when it was first erected before me. I’ve met this type numerous times before, and their ego has never had any effect on me. Most of these types are usually so focused on creating the impression that they know everything that they avoid those people in the room that they fear might know something. Another aspect of their psychosis that has usually led to them leaving me alone is that creating an impression in another person’s mind is hard work, and it usually involves a great deal of concentration on convincing yourself. As a result of this, most of them have already convinced themselves that they’re so much smarter than me that they usually leave those that don’t challenge that impression alone. When a friend of mine informed me, with a simple, relatively innocuous smile, that his façade was not only created before me, but for me, it got to me, in a competitive sense.

It happened one day when a third-party friend gave the two of us the impression that she thought my friend knew so much more than I did. It happened, as a result of the small smile that he flashed at me after this impression was made clear.

It all began with a joke that this third-party friend told us. I made the mistake of telling her that I didn’t get the joke, and when she proceeded to explain it to us, my friend began echoing her explanation to leave the impression that he got the punch line. He didn’t, but he pretended so well that she was left with the impression that he did. She even went so far as to compliment him on this. She said something along the lines of: “Why can’t ever get you?” There were no specific allusions to the fact that I was any less intelligent, but that was implied, and in that vein, my friend issued me a competitive smile. The smile began as a general one that one normally issues in the face of such a compliment, and then right before he turned to walk away, he flashed it at me.

I’m not here to tell you that I was completely innocent in the progression that would occur, and that I don’t have my own psychoses that can develop in the face of what could be called a perfectly innocuous smile. My confidence in my intelligence is such that I can better deal with outright challenges, and I can wave those off with the idea that the need to challenge me in such an overt manner probably says more about the challenger than me, but those relatively innocuous, and I say competitive, smiles get under my skin.

“Don’t you see it?” I asked this third-party person, as my friend walked away with that competitive smile all over his face. “Don’t you see the game he is playing?” The third-party friend confessed that she hadn’t, so I laid it all out for her. The answers I gave her concerned what my friend did, but I would not get to the more fundamental question of why he did it for years.

Jokes. The what he did involved my friend uncovering various loopholes that all humans have in their interactions. Most of these loopholes are not obvious, and they allow those that locate them to conceal the limits of their abilities. When I write the word ‘limits’ I hope that no one thinks this piece is written specifically for the purpose of exposing the limits of my friend. We all have limits, after all, and we’re all scurrying about trying to prevent others from seeing them, but some of us are more successful in covering them up than others. Some of us avoid issues that may reveal our limitations, and others simply learn how to roll with the crowd in such a fashion that their limitations simply aren’t considered. My friend had managed to turn the latter into an art form by the time I met him, and it would’ve remained our little secret if he hadn’t gotten my juices flowing with that competitive smile.

The loophole that my friend found in leading a joke teller to the belief that he got the joke laid somewhere in the laughter that he provided them when their joke was complete. It was in the thin “knowing” laugh that he had issued to this third-party joke teller to provide her a glowing compliment that she simply bathed in. In the midst of this glow, most joke tellers don’t put the brakes on the laughter to find out why the laugher thought the joke was funny. The joke teller will just join the laugher within the shared glow of appreciation, and they will remain in that glow while giving the explanation of the joke to that unfortunate soul that admitted that they didn’t get it. During this explanation, the impression seeker will nod knowingly, and everyone will move on with their lives with the impression that he got it, until the joke teller says something along the lines of: “Why can’t I ever get you?”

Trivia. My friend is smart, and he knows his stuff, but I don’t care how smart anyone is, there is always going to be someone, somewhere that will come up a joke, or a piece of trivia, that they won’t know. My friend found a loophole there too. After hearing a trivia question, my friend will sit back and offer no reaction. “Do you give up?” the trivia asker will ask after a time. “Tell me!” he will say. After they tell him the answer, he says, “That is where I thought you were headed,” and he will say that in a manner that gives the asker the impression that if they had only given him more time he would’ve come up with the answer. At that point, he will increase their impression of him by showing a general knowledge of the chosen subject that basically provides them breadcrumbs back to the answer of the trivia question. The breadcrumbs do not have to be specific breadcrumbs, but they’re breadcrumbs, and the asker is left with the idea that he knew the answer. The whole point is that my friend waits until after the answer is given before putting on his show, and this leads him to his impression of himself in the trivia world of being excellent at answering trivia questions. Others believe this impression too, either because they aren’t so impolite as to suggest that he doesn’t get any of the answers before they give them, or they don’t spend enough time with him to spot the pattern.

I’ve laid out these breadcrumbs myself, I think we all have, but I’ve always prided myself on laying out my breadcrumbs in a specific manner that specifically points to the answer of the question. But, and this is the key distinction, I will always admit if I flat out didn’t know the answer the question, or if it was on the tip of my tongue, or something I feel I should’ve known. I offer no illusions about my intelligence, in other words, but I’m more confident of my intelligence than my friend. I only get competitive when people point out that he’s more intelligent than I am, because he achieves that plateau in what I believe to be a false manner, and it’s that false manner that I want recognized more than my comparative level of intelligence.

Another loophole my friend has exploited in the human condition is the need most people have to be impressive. My friend initiates this loophole by turning your need to be impressive back on you. You tell him something to impress him. He’s not impressed. Most of us are insecure in this manner, and most of us will then begin to focus our need to be impressive on that one person that isn’t impressed with us. I fell for this at first. I felt an overwhelming need to leave him impressed. I would show him why I thought I was interesting and impressive, and I would try to show him that I was funny. He wasn’t impressed.

It wasn’t too long before I realized that I had accidentally become more impressed with him, because he wasn’t all that impressed with me. I had accidentally foisted upon him the status of being a barometer of what the two of us should deem as impressive, because (and here’s the key) he poked holes in all of my attempts to be perceived as impressive. The one thing that neither of us had bothered to do was examine if he was, in fact, impressive. Our focus was on me, and by focusing on me, we provided him the status of being one that analyzes another’s attributes from on high. I allowed him this stature, until I figured it all out, and it annoyed me when others proceeded to do the same without putting any effort into studying how he had manipulated their interaction. I wanted this phony to be exposed to the world, and I told everyone we knew what he was doing, until I believed we had all achieved a degree of awareness.

Missing components. What I accidentally tripped on, years later, in the course of studying what he did was why he did it. I wasn’t looking for an answer, when I interrogated him on an almost daily basis. Anyone that has made the decision to be my friend can attest to the fact that being subjected to interrogations is the gift/curse of being my friend. The answer didn’t occur in one “aha!” type of epiphany either. It just kind of occurred to me over the course of years that my friend had a vital component missing that he concealed within all of the impressions he created for others. There was a loophole here too, of course, a loophole that when you create your own impression others will either believe it because they don’t necessarily care if they’re wrong, or they are so involved in creating their own impressions that they don’t notice any of those occurring around them. Sifting through all these impressions, I accidentally uncovered that fact my friend did not care for rebellion in any way, shape or form. He would laugh when I described the various forms of rebellion I had engaged in, but when those moments came for him to display a little rebellion, he made it quite clear that he simply felt more comfortable within the confines that his authority figures had created for him.

This is not to say that rebellion completely forms a personality, or that a person that won’t rebel is always somehow incomplete. I’ve seen those that refuse to rebel achieve happiness, and a sense of completion, within authoritarian constraints. I’ve also seen those that solely define themselves through rebellion end up accomplishing so little in life that rebellion was all they had, and they used it in a competitive sense to define a sense of superiority against those that weren’t as rebellious. This friend of mine was trapped somewhere in the middle, and it exposed an essential missing ingredient that suggested that the difference between him and those that he sought to deceive by manipulating their impressions of him was not so much whether or not he eventually decided to rebel against something, but why he wouldn’t.

What was the reason my friend hadn’t rebelled against everything he could find, like the rest of us had when we were teenagers? Why hadn’t he as much to drink as a teenage body could handle? Why hadn’t he tried to have sex with as many women as humanly possible? Why hadn’t he tried drugs? Did it have something to do with the fact that he was simply more responsible than the rest of us? Was he simply smarter, and he understood the ramifications of such actions at an age when the rest of us were just stupidly going about doing whatever felt good? Or did he just have a better parent? And if his parent was better, was my friend’s aversion to rebellion based on the fact that he assumed that his dad provided such a sound case for not indulging that he wanted to follow his dad’s golden rules, to emulate this man that he so revered? Or did he simply not have the fortitude to rebel? Therein lies the essential ingredient that I believe is missing in my friend that most people, that don’t know him, don’t see. He was so scared of disappointing his dad that he failed to indulge in that time-honored, teen rebellion against authority that provides characterization to those of us that believed our parents were wrong about everything.

Those of us that rebelled against anything we could find, thought we were righteous warriors on the road to an ultimate truth that only we could define. We eventually found that we were wrong about most things, of course, and that we didn’t know everything, but something about traveling through that natural course of life defined us in ways that my friend lacked. We discovered these truths the hard way, and these discoveries incrementally defined us. Those, like my friend —that never rebelled in any substantial manner when they were young— walk around in their adult worlds with some necessary ingredient missing that they are never able to locate, so they just decide —over the course of failed interactions— to fill the gaps in themselves. They decide that no one is really looking at them with much scrutiny anyway, so no one will ever find out that they had simply created impressions of themselves for others to feed on —with fibs, and façades, and affectations— that gives those around them the idea that they are complete. They never expect another individual to get so close that they notice.

This missing component was difficult to find too, even with someone scrutinizing him as intensely as I was, because my friend was guarded. He talked about being guarded too. He spoke about the fortress that he had created around himself, and how few were admitted entrance.

“You’re lucky I let you in,” he said. “I don’t let most people in.” I felt complimented by this. Who wouldn’t? It wasn’t until I sat back and thought about how few were clamoring for entrance that I realized that he said this for impression’s sake. The impression that most “guarded” people want to leave is that thousands are banging at the door, and that if those people don’t act right, they are denied entrance. Most of us, like my friend here, actually have very few banging on our door, but what if they were? How would we keep them out? It is here that I believe my friend came up with the ideal barricade to his inner sanctum: he wasn’t very interesting. If you don’t want people in your inner sanctum, states the logic of the ideal barrier, be boring, be quiet, and exhibit very few traits that people are interested in. If you can accomplish that, most people won’t notice you, they will not want in, and your inner sanctum will be protected. If the Chinese had only considered my friend’s idea of displaying wares no one wanted, they would not have had to build that Great Wall thinger diller.

It should be noted here that my friend is a good guy, and I do not believe that he sat down one day and devised a strategy to create false impressions, and fool people into believing he was more than he was by exploiting all of the various loopholes that occur within human interactions. He is not a dishonest man, and he never set about to mislead people into believing that he had a game show host’s type of charm. He is simply an insecure man that has learned —through failed interactions that have exposed his weaknesses— how to protect himself from ridicule, scorn, or the idea that he might be inferior or limited in any way. Other than learning through painful exposures, he probably took note of how others created impressions, until he became a hybrid of all of them. On that note, some may think me cruel for scrutinizing him to the point of revealing him, and there were occasions when I did feel bad about all this, but any time I let my foot off the gas, my friend saw this as a moment of weakness that he seized upon to attack my character. My friend was no wilting flower, in other words, and most of the intense scrutiny I directed at him was borne of the competitive exchanges he and I have always engaged in.

These missing elements in my friend became so obvious to me, after a time, that when he tried to turn our friendship back to the stage where I was hell-bent on impressing him, it no longer mattered to me what he thought, because I knew that that sword he used to prod my weaknesses was actually a shield he held out to prevent further investigation.

Charles Bukowski Hates Mickey Mouse

March 12, 2013September 4, 2023 Rilaly1 Comment

It was a shock for me to hear that some assume Sesame Street’s Ernie and Bert are gay. When I first heard that, I thought the statement, true or not, was provocative, insurgent, and hilarious. I don’t remember who first made the claim, but I do recall thinking the individual was on the cusp of something new, something insidious, and transcendent. This person must be part of an insurgent generation that revolts against civil authority, through pop culture, in a manner that is not belligerent, I thought. I wanted to be at the forefront of that insurgence that didn’t just break down societal barriers but left a wasteland in its wake, and I was not concerned with collateral damage. Children be damned, I thought. I wanted to be one of those that shook the cultural two-liter bottle up, and I considered that characterization of Ernie and Bert a good start.

I wanted to convince the world, through repetition, that the reason Aloysius Snuffleupagus (affectionately known as Mister Snuffleupagus) talked and moved so slow on the set of Sesame Street was that he was stoned. I wanted to inform anyone who would listen that the Bradys were all stoned, gay, and involved in incest, along with anything else we could dream up to poke holes in the traditional wholesomeness that led my fellow brethren from broken homes to feel estranged. On the reality side of the tube, we were suffering, and many of us found it disgusting that sixties and seventies television would have the audacity to portray an idyllic image of a family that left the rest of feeling ostracized. I was ready, willing and able to join the fights, until Hollywood vindicated us by producing The Brady Bunch Movie that had its characters deal with pot smoking, lesbians, and the realities we purported to be more in line with our experiences.

“I’m serious. I can’t stand Big Bird. He’s an *******!” someone said.

I’m still not sure how much sincerity drove such comments, but that was precisely what made the insidious provocation so delicious. If it wasn’t serious, it was funny in a serious, seditious manner. If it was serious, on the other hand, it was funny in an unserious manner. Whatever the case, the artful joke teller left it as a standalone. A comment like that one stated that there was no need to preface such comments with the qualifiers most insurgents felt compelled to offer in the gestation period of the movement, when characterizing a child’s beloved creature in such a manner. Refraining from such typical hospitalities and considerations signaled to the rest of us that the age of qualifiers was over, and a full-on insurgency was under way.

Charles Bukowski was not the first to speak out against the authority figures of the sociopolitical world, nor will he be the last. The mindset might date back to the Romans, the ancient Greeks, and beyond, but to my knowledge, no one attacked the soft underbelly of civil authority through the pop culture staples of children’s entertainment as successfully as Bukowski. If he didn’t start the movement, he at least exerted tremendous influence on me and my insurgent brethren. We raised our fists high with a scream, when we learned that the writer had the temerity to come out against a cultural icon many believed to be the standard-bearer of cutesy America, and spawn of Walt Disney.

“Mickey Mouse is a three-fingered son-of-a-bitch with no soul,” Charles Bukowski said.

“For us to get back to real America,” a friend of mine said, paraphrasing Bukowski, “we have to destroy Mickey Mouse, because Mickey Mouse destroyed the soul of America.”

It was such a provocative statement, a plane of thought crashing into what I considered the foundation of America. Those I associated with at the time claimed that by making such a declaration, my friend gained panache, and the women around us dug panache. Someone else accused him of being an angry young man, and experience taught us that women loved angry young men. His statement was so provocative, and so Rage Against the Machine that we dug his anger too. Knowing nothing of Bukowski or any other insurgent thoughts at the time, we thought this guy had anger without causation, and we considered that the essence of cool.

“What are you rebelling against?” a female actor asked actor Marlon Brando in the 1953 movie The Wild One.

“Whaddya got?” Brando replied.

That’s the stuff! Suck it Mickey!

Those who have read Charles Bukowski already know that cute America began with an institution called Disney, which started with the institution created by the cartoon character called Mickey Mouse. “It all started with institutions for those who need to be institutionalized,” was a refrain of retro-hip haters. “Those who seek Mickey Mouse, as their form of entertainment live in a soulless, philosophy-free form of hell,” they said. “A life of Mickey will lead to an uncomplicated life of laughter, frivolity, fun, and soullessness. It will lead a generation of Mickey fans, children and otherwise, who will live without knowledge of the stark realities of poverty, drugs, disease, prostitution, and porn.” They apparently thought it would lead to a generation of children who wouldn’t understand the harsh realities of life.

“Mickey Mouse?” the aghast asked. “What could you possibly have against Mickey Mouse?”

“Nothing,” the cool, hip cats answered, “except that he is a three-fingered son-of-a-bitch with no soul.”

We fellas watched such cool, retro-hip cats walk away from such conversations, with laughter, open-mouthed awe, and elongated stares trailing behind them. We didn’t know if the women believed them, but we saw that some women loved such comments, and we knew we had to get some of that.

These provocative soothsayers appeared to have a formula for intriguing otherwise unattainable women, when they delivered such lines in a subtle and suave manner. The formula also appeared to be something we uncool fellas thought we could put to good use. I don’t know if others ever managed to use this technique successfully, but any flirtations I had with using the tool met a quick end when the retro-funny-nerd types stepped in with their “Elmo rocks!” and “Grover is a dude!” T-shirts. Those apparel choices were not intentionally insurgent, and their motivation confused me. Their shirts made kind, funny statements like, “Big Bird is my homeboy!” and, “I was raised on The Street” (with an accompanying picture of Sesame Street on the shirt), and they garnered laughter from women. Women asked them about their T-shirt, and the T-shirt wearers got a ticket to ride. This left the rest of us confused. “We had a formula,” we wanted to say to the retro-funny-nerd types. “You’re messing up the dynamic of what we just started to understand.”

Even if we had been able to use those insurgent statements, we would’ve said them with some humorous underpinnings. We wanted to be funny in a way that some strong, intellectual themes of that era were. I don’t know how many contra rebels sought the higher plane of funny in the manner I did, but I did run across a few who took the insurgent movement a bit too seriously and presented their arguments without any humorous underpinnings.

I don’t know if Bukowski was one of them, or if he used the insurgent formula to rise to the throne of the insurgent rebels in a capitalistic venture, but standup comedians took Bukowski’s fundamentals into the stratosphere. Bukowski might have found this a little unsettling. Then again, he might have intended these statements to serve as a launching point. Whatever the case, I’m sure that if Bukowski lived long enough to witness the insurgency permeate the culture to the degree where even little old ladies began declaring, “Barney sucks!” at Applebee’s, he would’ve been proud. Whatever the case, Bukowski’s acolytes took this message more seriously than the rest of us.

Few can pinpoint where such movements begin. Likewise, few can pinpoint their demise. In our limited perspective, we are only aware of what happens in our inner circles. In my inner circle, the insurgent institution began to wane, but the Bukowski acolytes held true. “Barney still sucks!” they said. They blasted the otherwise innocuous, purple dinosaur so often that some in their audience began to believe it was something more than comedic shtick. We began to understand that they were sincere believers. The retro-funny-nerd types and little old ladies at Applebee’s inadvertently exposed the true believers as ludicrous, and a little too serious and self-righteous, to a point where we laymen began to back away from our attempts to achieve orthodoxy.

“You do realize that Barney the Dinosaur wasn’t written for middle-aged men, right?” we asked the ultra-serious strain, waiting for their dry tones and deadpan expressions to break into a smile.

“I don’t care,” they answered. “He’s created a soulless America that seeks the cute mindset with those horrible ‘I love you’ and ‘you love me’ songs he sings. He has no soul.” Then, to further this insurgent agenda, they might turn to their children, and inquire, “Ms. Mary, What do we think of Barney the Dinosaur, Miss Mary?”

“He sucks!” Ms. Mary says. “He should have a hypodermic needle hanging from his arm, and a mohawk on his head, and the world would be a much better place if his father learned the proper use of a condom.” Ms. Mary’s learned version of cute sophistication often elicits laughter and a chorus of “Aw,” from everyone at the table.

At this point or some points in between, the observer begins to realize that the true believer has a bona-fide opinion on the matter, one they consider so consequential that they teach their children to mimic it. They are angry that any individual of any age would seek the soft entertainment that Mickey or Barney provides.

They cannot abide their children’s occasional giggles at the humorous actions of a grown man in a Barney outfit. When the show does garner a giggle, we can imagine them peering around their electronic device at Ms. Mary and admonishing, “What do we say about Barney again?”

“He sucks,” Ms. Mary repeats.

“That’s right,” the parents says before going back to their device.

At this point or some points in between, the casual observer can’t help but further question the parent’s motives. “I think this is all funny, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t possibly believe in this, this much, do you?”

For some parents, the dinosaur, the mouse, and some of the other, more popular characters of youth programming are annoying. Most parents of this era talked about the mind-numbing repetitiveness of some songs, and how the cutesy, nice interactions between the characters drove them crazy, but there are others who take these annoyances a step further. I’ve met them. I met parents who wanted more for their children, and their various definitions of more were largely left to the imagination. If a parent doesn’t want mind-numbing educational songs for their children, or cutesy interactions that might teach children how to interact with their peers, how does a parent counter such programming to prepare their children for the stark reality of the world? Do they introduce them to violent, obscene movies to give their children a more vivid picture of themes that contain violence and sexual identity? Do they do this under the guise that they believe this will lead to their children being less inclined to ostracize and hate the differences in people? What if, after watching such material, their child tickles Elmo in a department store, and they giggle along with the furry toy? We can only guess that this might manifest into some form of hopeless frustration. How does a parent counteract that? Would they sit their child down and remind them of the misery in the world? How far would they go to achieve some form of hopeless tears in their child? If they did achieve it, would they feel an odd sense of satisfaction by preparing the little one for the misery that awaits them on the other side of childhood? One has to wonder if these children are more miserable based on the efforts of their parents, and if there is anything, anyone could do to prepare them for a life of that.

Bukowski’s goal was to create an anti-Disney America that was awash in stark reality. By implication, we can suggest that if Bukowski were in charge, the children of America would be awash in alcohol, sex, and violence. He would want America’s children to know the country he knew and wrote about in his poems and books. He would want them to know the stark reality of abusive fathers and to be aware that alcohol is the only form of escapist entertainment that has any soul. “And the track,” Bukowski acolytes might remind us, “Don’t forget about Bukowski’s routine trips to the track.” We can be sure that the gospel according to Bukowski would include the belief that horses, not Mickey Mouse, can make all our dreams come true, and any child who doubts that can tune in to the cast of characters at their local track.

“Screw childhood,” Bukowski appeared to say. “Screw wholesome Americans, born and bred on Disney, who believe that naïve childhood should last as long as possible. It’s not realistic. Childhood is the very essence of cutesy America. It’s farcical, and it has no soul.”

To support the counter-argument, we must cede to the idea that Disney has damaged some susceptible children-turned-adults. We must recognize that some adults have an unusual and unhealthy propensity for fantasy, but what Bukowski and his acolytes don’t account for in the provocative, insurgent statements against Disney is that if Walt Disney’s creation never existed, there would be a need to create it. If Barney or Sesame Street never existed, something would fill that vacuous hole. Some of us may not enjoy the manner in which that hole was filled, but as my fifth grade teacher once said in various ways on far too many days, “The country in which you live has a Bill of Rights that allows you to complain about whatever you want, but if you’re going to complain in my class, you do have to offer an alternative solution. If all you do is complain, you’re useless to me.”

If those who complain about these institutions are able to see past their subjective frustrations and view the market in an objective manner, they will recognize that there was a need that Walt Disney and all of these other institutions filled. Rather than complain, in what my fifth grade teacher would’ve characterized as useless, Bukowski and his acolytes should’ve complained in a constructive manner by offering a viable alternative. If that need is institutional in America –be it is financial, capitalistic, emotional, or fundamental– these family-oriented entertainment vehicles tapped into something that made a generation of children a little happier. AY! There’s the rub, the nut-core of it all, happy. Bukowski types hate happy. If they were in control, America would be a happy-free zone.

Bukowski had a dream, a dream in which all children could one day live in a world where they were judged not by the shallow, clueless smiles on their faces, but by the spiritual –or spirited– lights of their soul. He had a dream in which all Americans, black and white and everything in between, could one day join hands in a happy-free, cute-free, Disney-free America.

Most would say America is a better, happier place for children, with Disney, Sesame Street, and most of the child-like, simple-minded, cute programming in it. Even the most jaded adult would admit that the tedious songs and simple-minded exercises make an imprint on young minds. Children learn through repetition, and the simple-minded, tedious repetitions also provide children a refuge from the various stresses that childhood might provide. The counterarguments seem incomprehensible to some of us, but perhaps that’s what makes them funny, quasi funny, and provocative. There are others, we’ve all met them, who believe these fantastical presentations do more harm than good, and they’re not trying to be provocative. The inevitable question arises, if these programming choices for children border on evil in their simplistic pursuits, how would we go about replacing them? The idea that they want children drinking alcohol, or attending the track is a strawman argument, they say, but when we advance the argument beyond the fallacious and beyond their provocative statements, we find that they’re stance is steeped in bitter contrarianism.

If Disney represents happy, cute America, as Bukowski suggested, should we nominate Bukowski an unofficial honorarium as miserable America’s ambassador? If Disney brought uncomplicated happiness to America’s shores, coupled with laughter, and joy, what did Bukowski bring? Anyone who knows anything about Bukowski knows that he had an abusive, alcoholic father. He also suffered from a clinical case of acne in his youth. These, among other issues, led him to a degree of misery that he mined to carve out a niche in the market that brought him fame and fortune. We know that while Bukowski may not have been the first to tap into the misery market, he might have done it better than those that preceded him, for few in history have relayed the unhappy mindset in such a comprehensive manner, and even fewer could express their hatred for happy people with such vigor.

Some believe Bukowski created the current manifestation of anti-happy that led to a hierarchical web of minions that display near-visceral hatred for The Brady Bunch, Leave It to Beaver, Disney, and all that is wholesome. These wholesome ideals, portrayed on screens, represented something that irritated these types. Perhaps it had something to do with the idea that these images served as a mirror to reveal something about them that they didn’t want others to see. Their anger hung out from beneath their skirt for all the world to see, but it did nothing for them to learn that in many quarters of America, it is now popular and chic to hate happy and wholesome America, simply because it’s too cutesy. It does nothing for them to know they’ve won in certain sectors, because their goal has never been about winning or achieving some form of satisfaction that could lead to happiness for another. No, the insurgent movement that I once considered so attractive was about spreading the misery, so they wouldn’t feel so much of it percolating under their skin while they sat on the other side of the tube, seething in the juices of their reality.