I’ll admit it. I suck at writing for the Internet. I am simply mediocre at the medium. The more of it I read, the more awful I realize I am at writing it. I mean, I’m good at writing plenty of other things, party invitations, passive aggressive notes, checks that my ass can’t cash, but I am just piss-poor at writing for the web. It just doesn’t work for me.
There are many reasons. The first of which is that I like a little bit of time to think before I write. Which isn’t really a luxury the Internet affords. You got to form an opinion fast on the web, because you’ve got to post before someone else wins or shows. So you don’t really have time to consider before you create. It’s a fast-moving super-highway, and unless your flying down it, you’re going to wind up stuck in traffic. Or without any.
I just can’t keep up to date with all the updating. It’s so difficult to come up with something new each and every date. Which is why I guess most people don’t. They just repost someone else’s content, add a snarky paragraph below it, and boom goes the dynamite, they’ve got a post of their own. These are the people that are really good at writing for the Internet. And they’ve got no idea.
Which is another reason I struggle with webbing. I prefer to have an original concept when I write, but in this new media era that is completely superfluous. So here I am wasting valuable minutes and days thinking of an idea, while others are filling up the Internet with formidable fodder, and people are viewing the hell out of it. Ideas are a thing of the past. And unless you want to get passed by it’s time to get with the times. Technology stops for no man, especially a thinking one.
And, I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m five foot six and a half when I lie, so I’m above nothing. I need new content to get through the day as much as the next time-killer. There’s a reason I check espn.com 240 times a day and don’t care if I’m reading about ladies golf as long as it’s new and I haven’t read it before. I love watching clips of what people who watch daytime news watched a few hours earlier. I surf the web like Frankie Avalon. I love reading repackaged, reposted, regurgitated Internet writing. I’m just trying to explain why I’m not any good at it.
Man oh man I wish I could write for the web. There’d be so much opportunity. I might actually be able to make some money with my words and my balls. But I’m just so embarrassingly terrible at it. I’ve just never been any good with new technologies. When I got my first computer I couldn’t even figure out who to play solitaire with. Then when I got my first cell phone I couldn’t figure out why no one wanted to talk to me. So, it’s no surprise that I struggle so mightily with this modern post medium. I just wish we all could go back to Microsoft Word.
Another reason I stink so bad at Internet writing is because I don’t really want to link to anything in the middle of a paragraph. I find it distracting. Once again, I love it when the great, canonical Internet writers of our time do it–they’re so fun to click on, and just get deeper and deeper and deeper into the web, going to weird dark places and pockets you didn’t even know existed, until, by the end of the journey, you don’t even remember what you were reading about in the first place. But, for purely selfish reasons, I actually like people to pay attention for a whole seven hundred word-piece. Which is such a pain in the ass.
Also, and this is may be my worst trait of all, I don’t just want to write about myself. What I did, where I went, what I believe. What I rony, I know. But really I just want to write jokes and hahas about what’s going on. I’m no good at trying to sell my self or convince you my life is very interesting. Trust me, you wouldn’t buy it.
Plus, and this may be even a worse trait than my worst trait of all, I like to use both hands when I write. Not just the left or the right. I wouldn’t even know how to go about doing that. Yet it seems like so many well-read Internet writers have become very adept at typing with one hand. While feeding from the other. Just another reason I’m so jealous of their unbelievable ability.
And finally, I suck at Internet writing because I’m just no good at specificity. I like talking about general themes and making sweeping points and mocking broadly. I don’t care why we’re fat, who’s sitting in your precious handicap seat, or what white people like. I don’t really care about something that’s funny for a minute, then there’s really no reason to ever return. I don’t care about fifteen minutes, I only want five, every two weeks or so. So suck it up, and keep reading.
On to the trivia:
Movies About Hair Stylists
1) We got to start with the only academy award nominated movie in this category. Released in 1975 and starring Warren Beatty as a lothario hairstylist for a bevy of beautiful women played by Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, and Carrie Fischer, name the seminal seventies comedy that explored the sexual politics of the late 1960s?
2) We would be remiss if we went even one question further without asking about 2002 smash hit Barbershop. Barbershop was such a success that it spawned a sequel, a television series, and a spin-off. The spin-off starred Queen Latifah’s character, who was introduced in Barbershop 2: Back in Business, and was called what?
3) One of my favorite films in this genre is the 2001 British comedy about the World Hairdressing Championships, Blow Dry. Featuring and eclectic cast including Alan Rickman, Josh Hartnett, and the late Natasha Richardson, the poster for the film chose not to highlight any of these actors and instead featured this supermodel and television star who also has a small role in the film. Name her.
4) Fitting loosely but nicely in here is that most gentle and beloved of movie hairstylists, Edward Scissorhands. Edward, though, as well as being an expert hair-stylist is really a jack of all trades, as it is discovered that he is also a master of ice sculpture, and of this, the term for the art of creating sculptures out of a medium of bushes, shrubs or trees, what is the name of this art form?
5) There’s no more recent addition to this category then 2008 Adam Sandler laffer You Don’t Mess With The Zohan. About an unbelievably effective Israeli operative who turns his back on military work to pursue his dreams of becoming a hair-stylist, the movie was, I think we could all agree, just slightly better then okay. Which isn’t saying much for a movie that was written by three comedy powerhouses. The movie was co-written by Sandler, the omni-present Judd Apatow, and this cult comic. The man behind TV Funhouse and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, name this funny gentleman.
6) Oh c’mon, if you know us at all, you had to know this question was coming. There is no more notorious movie about a hair-stylist then 1997 silver screen classic The Beautician and the Beast. In the film, Fran Drescher plays a former beautician, who, through an odd series of events ends up in charge of tutoring the three kids of a dictator of the made-up Eastern European nation Slovetzia. And, get this, at first the dictator can’t stand her, but, by the end, after seeing the connection she has with his kids, learns to love her. Name the actor, who takes slumming it up to a new level, by appearing in The Nanny: The Movie along side Ms. Drescher.
Answers
1) Shampoo
2) Beauty Shop
3) Heidi Klum
4) Topiary
5) Robert Smigel
6) Timothy Dalton
