Wolf Gnards

A brand new year, same old laziness. But let’s look back at the Year in Gnards, which featured such memorable articles as… that thing with that person. And that other thing about something or other. Memorable is perhaps a stretch, more like a vast array of forgettable schlock, but, dammit, it's my forgettable schlock. This last year there were no articles that people loved such as Groundhog Day math or even articles that people hated like Doug’s Racist Funnie Bone. Bland was my goal for 2011 and when I hit the middle, I hit it hard! You could, of course, blame how few articles I wrote in 2011. You could say that there were no good articles because there were so few articles written, but the few articles I wrote weren’t very good either so that couldn’t be the problem. Want proof?

Here are the top articles that most of you didn’t read… enjoy (or not):

10. Sewer Cinema – There’s a lot of movie posters with manhole covers on them. That’s it.

9. Hooded Injustice – A post inspired by NBC’s mega hit show The Cape. It’s a good thing that it’s the #1 show on television or else this article would be a complete waste.

8. MTV’s Teen Wolf – As you can see, I don’t watch a lot of very good shows on TV. Could that be part of the problem?

7. Me Trying to Milk Groundhog Day Fame and Glory Even More – I think I’ve done all I can do.

6. The Raping of Goldie Hawn – So, this is what you degenerates like? (I do not advocate rape or Goldie Hawn)

5. The Law of Cartoon Pants – Naked cartoons… now this is what the internet is all about!

4. In Defense of Robin – Batman & Robin gay jokes. Not particularly original or clever, but internet traffic obviously doesn’t require either.

3. Cosby Sweaters! – I think most people liked the creepy pictures, but my favorite part was figuring out how much he spent on sweaters: between $60,000 and $100,000!

2. The True Paternity of Girls on Full House – Sex, intrigue, blonde girls: it has everything the web could want. Side note: it took me about 3 hours to get those charts right, and they’re still kind of off kilter.

1. Pictures of Rachael Leigh Cook – That’s all it takes: no jokes, no clever graphs, no witty one liners. Just a moderately hot girl that we kind of sort of remember from the 90’s.

I know all you hardcore Gnarders out there are wondering where Wolf Gnards has been (if, of course, there is a such thing as "hardcore Gnarders," which I doubt). Where have I been? I've been away... facing mirror images that were not my own, leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that my next leap will be the leap home. Mostly I've been laying low, ducking fans who complain I make too many stupid Quantum Leap references. If those are even fans or if they exist at all or they're just digital spiders built for one purpose: to nitpick pop culture articles nitpicking pop culture. But if you imaginary fans do exist, rest assured that Wolf Gnards will be returning soon with regular updates. And if you imaginary fans don't exist than I'm just talking to myself, confirming to only myself that I do plan to write more articles in the upcoming year. Which is nice because I was kind of worried.

And if my mom is the only one reading this: I think I left some socks at your place. Can you send me my socks? They're white. You don't have to air mail them or anything, regular postal service will do. They look like this:

And if my mom isn't reading this, and if there are actual hardcore Gnarders out there then the time has come to unite! Follow Gnards on Twitter or Facebook or both. Follow me anywhere you can. Find other gnards out there, pair up, spread the word. I mean you really can't call yourself a Gnarder unless you're covered in gnards. 2012 will be the Year of the Gnards... which I believe is in the Chinese Zodiac. And if you see my sock, please, send it to me.

And, yes, a post saying there will be posts is not a real post.

Jeff Goldblum does stuff, the sooner we learn this the better. He's the best, he's the brightest, and let's not forget: Jeff Goldblum is not dead. And most important, Jeff Goldblum is the answer to every mystery. Aliens? Goldblum. Big Foot? Goldblum. Loch Ness Monster? They've all been Goldblummed.

Other webbiness:

Universal Pictures covers Natalie Portman up with a digital bikini bottom. That's like a crime against humanity. When I go to a movie, I've paid good money to see Natalie Portman's bare or semi-bare butt. I wouldn't see movies like Phantom Menace, Black Swan, or The King's Speech if there wasn't the off chance I'd see Portman's bottom (Side note: I found The King's Speech very disappointing for it's total lack of Portman butt or Portman at all).

Superhero fashion show. Come on, hipsters, don't take comic books away from me, too. I've been wearing the same Batman t-shirt since 1989, don't make it fashionable now.

$2 million script for sale on eBay. I can undercut this guy, you can have any of my half finished projects for a mere $1.9 million dollars. Just know that I don't do coherent plots, female characters, or check spelling (but if you're a regular reader of Wolf Gnards, you already knew about spleling).

As I sit and listen to Weezer's new album Hurley, I keep asking myself: What the hell happened to Weezer? I like gimmicks as much as anyone else: I like pumps on my sneakers, phones that flip, peanut butter on my chocolate, chocolate on my peanut butter. But I don't know about this, is Hurley's face enough of a draw and does it make the music better and/or does it add anything at all to the music? Does Hurley mean something? Get Lost in the music or something equally inane? Or did they just put him on the cover because they could. There is, in fact, a reason for Hurley but I'm still not sure I understand it, much like Lost in a way. Remember when Weezer meant something, when the songs were deep, songs about sweaters and hash pipes.

Weezer is what I call nostalgia rock. All their songs pretty much follow this premise: remember when this thing/moment/common childhood event/TV show/Youtube video happened, that was awesome. And there's nothing wrong that formula, the Blue album still takes me back to my younger days. The only problem is Weezer frontman, Rivers Cuomo, hasn't been normal for 20 years. His songs then become something like, “Remember when we played that show in Germany... that was awesome.” But I don't remember that because that's an experience uniquely specific to him.

So, you want to write whimsical pop music, but your life is plumb out of whimsy, what's a guy to do? Put Hurley's face on the cover, that's whimsical, right? That's better than writing fun relatable music, got to be. Why go through the grueling process of writing songs when you can just say, “Hey, you liked Lost, right? You probably had good times watching it. Remember Hurley? Everybody likes a lovable fat guy, right? Well, this CD is a lovable fat guy.” Although, if that was the criteria I would probably put Rerun from What's Happening!! or Chunk from The Goonies on the cover because they have a higher fun per cubic fat ratio.

Perhaps, part of the problem is it seems like Weezer has been putting out an album every 6 months, but just because you can release an album every 6 months doesn't mean you should. How about some sort of editing process. It easy to take out stuff and things that not good. I'm sure if you culled the best songs from Weezer's last three albums, you'd have one fairly decent album on your hands.

Find Matt Sharp

Or, maybe, Cuomo is too busy to make good music, too busy growing mustaches, wearing snuggies, and feeling the magic in him. If his head isn't in it, then no one's head is in it. Weezer is essentially Rivers Cuomo with the rest of the band being backup. Which, of course, brings me to Matt Sharp. I think Weezer first went off track when original bassist Sharp left the band. I'm a huge Weezer fan, but I've always been more of a Matt Sharp era Weezer fan: so that spans just two albums, the Blue album and Pinkerton. Sharp was not Cuomo's writing partner or equal, this wasn't a Lennon and McCartney relationship or even George Michael and whoever the hell the other guy in Wham! was. Matt Sharp added something though, something perhaps intangible, a note of discontent, an opposing an opinion. It's sort of like when the Misfits reformed without Danzig, former members Jerry Only and his brother Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein had to go to court a la Tina Turner to keep their name. They admitted that Glenn Danzig did everything, but they had to prove that they were 25% of the band. Danzig said it was something more like 1%, but that was enough for them to perform as The Misfits again (in a separate court case Jerry Only also proved he invented the devilock hairstyle). That's what Matt Sharp is, he's that glorious 1% that makes everything work. Coincidentally, Sharp also sued over partial ownership of Undone (The Sweater Song) and the first 9 songs on Pinkerton.

Matt Sharp was the only guy willing to stand up and say, “I get it, ok, girls didn't like you in high school, but now they like but you don't know if it's because you're famous or because you're you, it's tough, wah, wah, let's write a song about something else.” So, Matt left the band after Pinkerton; he went on to do some cool stuff with Moogs, formed The Rentals, and performed on two Tegan and Sara records. And Weezer would go on to put out the same albums with the same album covers year after year.

Someone is putting up $10 million dollars if Weezer quits. I say put up $10 million to get Matt Sharp to join the band again, or to let Rivers forgive and forget. Maybe, $9.9 million to Rivers and 100,000 to Matt, whatever's fair.

Not too long ago, I was at show and the opening act was an incredibly horrible hipster band. Western button down shirts, big Harry Caray glasses, porn star mustaches, the whole shebang. I would try to look up exactly what band it was, but I'm afraid even touching upon that horribleness again will send me into a spiral that I will never be able to recover from. They had sort of a throwback 80's synth sound (which as a child of the 80's I have no problem in and of itself – I will be wanging the proverbial chung tonight), but it sounded like this was the first time they ever performed together or picked up their respective instruments. The thing that really stuck with me though is that I couldn't figure out if this band just happened to be hipsters and happened to be awful or if they were intentionally trying to be awful. As in being awful was a personal choice and some statement they were trying to make. Their awfulness was some sort of grand ironic statement: they're here, they're terrible, get used to it. Which begs the question: do hipsters understand irony?

Most of hipster culture is built upon a thick layer of the kitsch. Kitsch meaning to find beauty, value, and art in seemingly worthless or tasteless objects. They are going to surround themselves by a series of things or objects or concepts that everyday people tossed aside and will defend these discarded pop items with somber intensity. The problem is just because something—a shirt, a song, a hairstyle—is horrible doesn't mean it's kitsch. The hipster problem is perhaps a complete misunderstanding of the term ironic. It's the mindset that says bad = good. In the hipster world, if something sucks it is ironic because they believe themselves to not suck. Which formulates to something along the lines of:

Sucks = Cool if Cool ≠ Sucks

This is the principle behind a non-cowboy wearing a cowboy shirt at concerts playing what can only be described as uncountry music.

However, as you can see, this is not quite right. Irony is when the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same creating an incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. There's a contextuality to irony that Hipsters seem to ignore. Two major events in the past 20 years have aided in this misconception. The problem perhaps first developed with Alanis Morissette in her song “Ironic” (which is actually ironically titled because nothing in the song is ironic). This song established irony for an entire generation of young minds, and established it incorrectly. The song is a list of great ironies, instead of listing ironic instances, Alanis simply lists things that are bad. Let's look at the song: It's a black fly in your Chardonnay. It's like rain on your wedding day. It's a free ride when you've already paid. All of which are bad, none of them being actually ironic. This will eventually lead to the hipster mind associating irony with bad. However, it is not the object itself being bad which makes it ironic, but your relationship with the object. So, rain on your wedding day is not ironic, rain on your wedding day and you're marrying a weather man, slightly ironic. Similarly, that cowboy shirt is only ironic if you're standing next to a shirtless cowboy. Irony is more about personal relationships and underlining context than mass compilation of dissimilar possessions or ideas; hipsters have become little more than pop culture hoarders.

The other major footnote in the hipsters misunderstanding of irony is from Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites. Ethan Hawke is the poster boy for indie douches everywhere and indie girls who can't understand that a guy's total indifference is not deep and secret longing. It's just indifference. But back to Hawke and irony. When asked to define irony, he famously states, “It’s when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning.” Which is a good sounding answer. It seems very much correct. But this would mean that all opposites are ironic and doesn't take in the incongruous nature of the situation. Irony has no negative or positive values, and while an ironic relationship can be caused through polar opposition, it is not necessarily the only cause. Hawke ultimately feeds into the this thing sucks/I don't suck philosophy. This isn't irony, but grade school opposite day. And in large part hipsters skate by playing an endless game of opposite day. Dorky is the opposite of cool meaning this cowboy shirt is cool.

All I know is that bars by me are charging 5 bucks Pabst Blue Ribbon and kids are running around with the same glasses as me (but with no lenses), thank you Ethan Hawke and Alanis Morissette.

Tired of answering the question, "Where did you get your glasses?" Lisa Loeb finally did something about it.

Our favorite girl with glasses, has come out with a line of eyewear guaranteed to attract guys from 1995. That's the biggest problem with either a guy traveling to the future, or a girl traveling to the past... how do you break the ice and hook up? He's either too caveman Dave Mathews Band or she's too Lady Gaga silver jump suit. Lisa Loeb's glasses certainly can't hurt.

Besides picking up guys from fifteen years ago, her glasses are great for librarian or granny cosplay. If you're really looking for a good time try librarian granny singer-songwriter from the future.

It certainly does it for me!

Seriously, let's do this.