Obirony Updates

UrbanDictionary says...


Bam! Do a google search for "obirony". Come on, I dare you. Know what pops up as number 2?

That's right. Our post on the waning fortunes of obirony.

A victory for our Post-Ironic Studies division if I ever saw one.

Also, as an update, see how, just as we predicted, Obama's political fortunes are rising once more ("Obama's Strategy Pays Off", though with just enough disillusionment that times are still tough for the Obironist. Hold in there, poking fun at the Obama supporter will be cool again soon.

Mad Men, The 90s Revival, and Post-Irony

This week, we're doing a Mad Men series. Why? Well, it seems like since the early 60s popularity is hitting its zenith (/starting to decline), it's time to do what we can to celebrate it. Plus Mad Men's phenom.

So, first--Mad Men in 60 seconds


Second, a Post-Ironic look at the shape of 60s nostalgia: (more after the jump)

Reasons I'm happy I don't live in Austin

Oh god the hackneyed irony!

Obirony Updates

In the NY Times, Frank Rich just wrote an article on Obama's news tactics. Interesting follow-up to our previous posts on the subject. Nothing new to report really, but an interesting angle to add to our discussion.

Ask Awkward Haiku - Obirony

As loyal readers know, we here at Awkward Haiku specialize in post-ironic trends. Irony and post-irony have important ramifications in the pop culture zone, it can be difficult to track how irony turns into post irony, before reaching another stage of irony. The Awkward Haiku labs are researching the flow across pop culture, and occasionally publish our findings.

But right now, we've taken a break from the big research topics (for instance, what inspires the robotic uprising fear? How did fairy tales briefly take over pop culture in the 80s?) to answer some questions from our loyal readers.

This week's question was sent in by Mahmoud A. in Tehran.

Dear Awkward Haiku,

Is obama-themed imagery ironic yet? How about spoke cards on non-fixed gear bikes? I'm thinking of purchasing this bicycle, and wish to know if I'll be simply tacky, or ironically tacky. 

I love your bear jokes!

Love,

Mahmoud 

Dear Mahmoud,

Thanks for writing in! We've never posted any bear jokes, but we'll see what we can do.

First off--yes Obama imagery is still ironic. The first mass embrace of the Obama irony (Obirony as it's referred to in our tracking) came onto the scene shortly after the election. While there had been glimmers of it before (e.g. "Barack you like a hurricane" "Barack and roll" "between Barack and a hard place" and our personal favorite "Barack you Obamadeus"), after the election the tackiness of those earnest hucksters seeking to make a buck off the election/liberals wetting themselves over the hope of something new inspired a wave of mock-anticipation and joy*1. As the wave of products hit the infomercials (need I remind anyone about the obama plates, the age of hope thong, the chia obama, or any of the other parts of the sea of obama cashing in?), it became acceptable to feign a belief in total transformation. Jokes about hoping Obama would end disease and frowns within 5 weeks hit their peak 3 weeks before the inauguration. Jokes about furnishing one's apartment entirely with yes we can commemorative material peeked about a week after the inauguration.

This would have been the ideal time to ride a bike like this. You'd crest on the wave of silliness, yet gut irrational hope that this really was a transformative moment. You'd perform the perfect feat of mocking Obamites/mass opinion, yet at the same time entirely supporting it.

However, the last few months, as we all know from cable news, has not been good Obama in mass culture. Not to debate the veracity of that (our labs focus only on irony in fads), but that, as well as time passing have led to the state of affairs where it'll still get a chuckle, but over-enthusiastic Obama fever seems out of place. Obirony is still ironic, however it's turned a little mean. Now as we all know from our introductory post-irony-studies courses (ah the good olds of PIS101. I failed the class actually because I spent my time flirting with the TA, but luckily the professor turned in grades on opposite day. I really dodged a bullet there), once irony reaches that stage, it's time is numbered.

Using a simple Millard-Roswell conversion equation*2, we can predict that Obirony will become earnest and post-ironic within 2 months. This makes sense on all sorts of levels. Obama is a redemption story, like any other story in pop culture. He comes in with a wave of expectation, which means he's no longer an underdog. Because of this, he stumbles, there's a fall, which turns him into an underdog again, but this time with something to prove. Once the underdog is ready for the journey, American pop culture will follow.

As such, my dear Mahmoud, if you ride this bike in the next 2 months, it will no longer be a little dated and cruel, but instead tacky.

Never fear though! These are cyclical. Post-irony is a science of sorts. Awkward Haiku labs will go on record to predict that Obirony will be back in a fresh form in 8 months. It will be different, but we feel confident telling you you'll be able to ride your bike then, entirely ironically tacky. If you can't wait, have you considered a Dick Cheney wheelchair?

Sincerely,
All of us at Awkward Haiku

----------

*1)see for instance, this painting which circulated en masse around mid November 2008-


*2)simple equation for determining at what time the fad stops being ironic, and whether or not it disappears or enters post-irony. The variables include level of mass awareness, corporate sponsors, audience, culture, relevance, and silliness. Certain fads don't have enough staying power to become post-ironic. Some never transform from irony.

Elephants in the News: Elephants and Prosthesis

Baby Elephant Rock-a-bye.



Adult Replacement Leg



Prosthetic Body

Forgetfulness: Gwyneth Paltrow's Lost Goop Newsletter

From the hidden archives in the Be section of Goop.com

When I was living in Spain I had a maid that was very forgetful. One day we took a trip to Lisbon, I had told her to make sure that the marble on the parapet was polished. I had specifically told her to use the 1000 grit sand paper (that Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel had taught me to use on Italian marble)and even showed her the supply that I kept in the storage yurt.

That evening when we returned from our trip I found the casa a mess and my maid had fallen off the parapet and was too forgetful to call for help. We called an ambulance (or an ambulancia as they call them in Spain) and was rushed to the hospital. She didn't recover.

I was reminded of this incident today when I couldn't find the keys to my smart car and thought that this would make a good introduction to my real question What is memory? Why do we become forgetful? And, how can we have a better memory? Below the sages weigh in...

Love,

Question:

Fogetfulness is sometimes defined, by webster in the 1828 edition as: "The quality of losing the remembrance or recollection of a thing; or rather, the quality of being apt to let any thing slip from the mind." How do we come about to the state of bein that we would have the quality of losing the rememberance of a thing?

A:

Zen Master Johnathan Schiffmiller replies:

Well Gwyneth, forgetfulness is not always a bad thing. On the path to enlightenment one must forget or let go of the want and pain that material posetions can bring about in us. Your own need for remembering may be the material world around you drawing you off the road to nirvana.

(Don't include this part Gwyn, but are we still on for your meditation session next Friday? It's just that I have a retreat coming up and...well give me a call. One more thing, I wouldn't go with the name, 'Goop' for your blog, it's one letter away from a racial slur.)

A:

Neuro-Scientist Maruice Applebaum says:

Your just getting older Gwyn, that's what happens when you get old, your neurons don't charge up and shoot around as well as they used to when you were younger. Hell, it happened to Einstein, and he was one of the smartest guys out there.

No one else would respond to my question. If you have anything to say, and you are a sage, just leave a comment.

Little Red Guards Attend A Repudiation Meeting

This is an actual translated song title from of an old record of Chinese Children's Songs. I'm not making that up. Children's song. Little Red Guards Attend A Repudiation Meeting.

That's just awesome.

Meanwhile, here are a few random links and quick film review:

Thatbestkept helpfully provides a "sensitive leftist guide to enjoying the Rambo movies."

Michael "Mikey Boy" Mannino has some interesting thoughts in the current issue of Adbusters about the history of analogies between physics and economics. Without necessarily endorsing everything he has to say (particularly in what is, after all, a quick and dirty popularization of some themes that Mannino has developed in a much more rigorous form elsewhere), I will note that he seems to be hitting much the same point made by Marxist economist David Laibman in an interview that went up on the Diet Soap podcast this week: that mainstream economists have re-defined their discipline away from having much of anything to do with actually studying the economy, instead turning it into a weird a priori calculus of rational choice under ideal circumstances.

As they might say on XKCD, fuck that.

Speaking of Diet Soap, the zine's editor, Doug Lain, is the author of some of my favorite short stories. One of them is called The 84 Regress, and it ties together paranoia, nostalgia, some ideas developed by Philip K. Dick in the period of his 'Valis' experience, and commentary on the fact that everyone in the 90s seemed to be constantly popping psychiatric medications. All of this leads to a startling conclusion:

1984 never ended.

Everything that's happened since then is an illusion.

Now that we have a G.I. Joe movie and not one but two Transformers movies, I'm starting to wonder if Lain didn't accidentally stumble on the truth with that premise. Are we, in fact, living in the 80s?

If so, you might as well resign yourself to your fate, adjust your hair style and fashion sense accordingly, then make some popcorn and settle in to watch the sparkling gem of 1980s cinema that is Return Of The Living Dead.

That would, of course, be the relatively little-known sequel to Night Of The Living Dead, made not by Night director George Romero (who went on to make the vastly superior Dawn Of The Dead) but by Dan O'Bannon. It's relatively little known compared to Romero's movies, anyway, but it did have its own impact on American pop culture. It convinced everyone that zombies eat brains!

Remember, Romero's zombies don't show any evidence of thinking, much less talking. They shamble, and they try to eat people, and that's that. They certainly don't show any particular preference for brains over any other part of the human body. O'Bannon's zombies, on the other hand, walk, talk, trick people, and, crucially, constantly scream for brains. "Brains!" The movie features a particularly awesome scene in which a disembodied head and torso calmly explains that she likes to eat brains because eating them helps alleviate "the pain of being dead."

So, just to be clear: This is a dumb movie. It is to Night Of The Living Dead or Dawn Of The Dead as one of those vampire romances they sell in the supermarket checkout line is to Dracula. The action is schlocky, the plot excuse for the mandatory tit shot is among the flimsiest on record, and the teenage characters in particular are so far from acting or talking like real human people that it's tempting to interpret them as members of some other species.

But.

That said.

Somehow, despite myself, I ended up liking it. The tone was just right. It knew exactly what it was and didn't take itself seriously, there was a lot of fun clockwork plotting in that 'everything we set up in the first reel will come back in the last one' kind of way and the ending had a beautifully pulpy joy de'vivre to it. So, hey, if you've already watched all of the Romero movies and 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead, and you need your zombie movie fix, you could do worse.

Well, that's all the time we have for today, but if you watch the movie and follow the links, all that should keep you entertained until we talk again next week. Have fun!

Oh, and do like the children's song says, and "repudiate Lin Piao and discredit him completely."

Meet The New Guy

We here at Awkward Haiku wanted to welcome our new contributor, Ben, by asking him to write up a list of ten things about himself. “Jesus,” he responded, “like one of those fucking annoying Facebook memes? No thank you.” “Oh, come on,” we said. “Everyone loves Facebook memes! They’re so post-ironic!” Then Ben said some very rude things, and we had to take away his pot, his rolling papers and his collection of Nick Mamatas stories until he agreed to write the list. An hour later, after realizing that (a) Family Guy wasn’t nearly as funny as he’d thought it was, and (b) no one can write Lovecraftian Marxist silliness as well as Nick Mamatas does, he relented and produced the following list:

(1) Politically, I’m a centrist. Provided, that is, that the opposite poles relative to which I’m in the center can be trotskyism and anarcho-syndicalism.

(2) I write short stories with names like The True Meaning Of K-Day and Three Perspectives On The Role Of The Anarchists In The Zombie Apocalypse. Oddly enough, I haven’t been making enough money at that to quit my day job just yet.

(3) A couple of weeks ago, Will Ludwigsen accused me of having a “pizza fetish.” This is unfair. I just really like pizza.

(4) Related to (2), my collaborators mentioned Nick Mamatas above. A list of my top five favorite working short story writers would probably also include Doug Lain, Gord Sellar, Lavie Tidhar and Ted Chiang. If you’ve never heard of any of those guys, that might go a long way toward explaining why I don’t expect to be able to quit my day job any time soon.

(5) OK, you ask, but what is this un-quittable job? Well, I’m a PhD candidate and instructor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Miami, in sunny and decadent South Florida, which means that “work” mostly involves standing in front of a classroom for an hour and fifteen minutes twice a week, sucking on a cup of coffee and correcting 19-year-olds’ logic mistakes. There are probably worse day jobs.

(6) Related to (1), my conception of socialism is that everyone in the world could have the approximate lifestyle of the guys on “Entourage.” Is that so ridiculous?

(7) The item designated as (7) in this list is a lie.

(8) My dissertation is about the semantic status of sentences like (7). It’s like being paid to masturbate.

(9) But not really.

(10) You all need to watch this. Over and over again, until you’ve absorbed all that it has to teach you.

Ben will post every friday until he gets swallowed by the gibbering creatures of non-euclidean geometry

Thoughts

With this, the rehabilitation of Eliot Spitzer's career begins.

Is it intentional? Is it just one of those things where enough time passes, and the political cycle, in need of hero-villian-characters resuscitates figures without those figures trying? Is this a flash in the pan, or the beginning of the long hard slog by him to get back in the game?

We'll keep you posted.

Dispatches From the Damned - Updated*

Watching Mad Men.

Needless to say, I'm dressing better, and drinking more.

I Would Have Stayed Home

I hate to post things from the onion. But c'mon!

Think of it as a bit of celebration for tomorrow's DVD release of Mad Men Season 2/a celebration of minimum wage jobs.

I expect Matt to write an aesthetic analysis of the cartoon, and for Abby to rail against it

Hipster Handbook ב: Kabster

Kabster: Your friend that has switched religions four times in six years, each switch more annoying than the last. We know that you were raised Southern Baptist and that you just can’t shake the idea of a ‘force greater than us,’ but take a cue from the Catholics and keep it to yourself. Kabster derives from Kabala because Budster would never work.

The only way that the Kabster continues to your friend is that s/he is good at their hep job and still go out at night.

Dispatches From the Damned

So much TV has been consumed. Far too much. On the plus side, during my voyage into televised madness (or maddening television i suppose), I've learned a few things...
First, intelligent, slow, well-constructed drama is best hidden by trashy-sounding subject matter. Battlestar Galactica, True Blood
Second, guilty pleasures work best when tied to fear. Mary Louise-Parker's nervous grin in Weeds being the best example of this (when the show works, her uncomfortable wide smile works as a punctuation, a sign she's affected by what's going on around her, and similarly I find it effective/funny. when she's too in control and does that grin, it's useless. Similarly when she doesn't seem to care).
Third, we remain in a golden age of television, at least for basic cable. Funny shows that aren't sitcoms are commonplace. Lurid, depressing plots are everywhere. Wounded characters abound. There's even some intelligent and daring choices made. Auteur-television is here. For now.

Anyway, I'm going to try to make up this absence to all you loyal readers. Here's a preview of what's coming up...

A transcription of last weeks unviewable episode of AHtv, a discussion of what it means to celebrate July 4, and some talks about neckties.

Marie "dada" Osmand

This is Marie Osmand reciting, "Karwane" By Hugo Ball. This is dadaism at its best. Pay no mind to the video, just listen to the poetry.

10 Thoughts about Video from Paul Kelly on Vimeo.

Hipster handbook II: Hepster

Hepster: An African hipster. It is not compulsory that the hipster in question be Black or African-American to be a Hepster. The true Hepster falls apart when s/he sees the The phrase hipster is a deviation from, hippie which is a devation from hip. That hip was mis-derived from hepcat, hip-cat. In Swahili, hepcat means person, in the same way that mench means person in Yiddish.

MAMADOU KIBIE DIABATE
by flipper1

Hipster Handbook β: Yidster

Since the release of the 'Hipster Handbook' in 2003 there have been quite a few changes in the morphology of the constitution of hipsterdom. One of the projects will be to revamp the labels.

Yidster: A Yiddish hipster. Let’s make something clear here, in no way can the Yidster be a Hasseed. That is Hasidic Orthodox, or any kind of Orthodox. It is also not compulsory for the Yidster to be Jewish or have any Jewish heritage, although it helps. All that is required is an obsession with all things Yiddish and know a few phrases to pepper a conversation. When a Yidster can’t get a tweet through or the café’s wireless router is down, s/he doesn’t proclaim, twitterfail!, s/he will shout, es geht nischt. A female Yidster is an Ester, just don’t call her a kurva.

Here are some phrases to get you started:

Folg mich a gang!: Quite a distance! Why should I do it? It's hardly worth the trouble!

Gatkes - Long winter underwear (you use it more than you think)

Ich hob nicht kain anung - I have no idea.

Ich darf es vi a loch in kopf! - I need it like a hole in the head!

In di alteh guteh tseiten! - In the good old days!

Serrious news from Iran.

Hi all,

If you want to check out what is happening in Iran go to:

Twitter tag: gr88 tehran iranelection Iran09

Refresh often.

Translator tool from Google to translate Farsi to English

Torrent video's of Police Brutality in Iran.

This will most likely be picked up by the government.

Follow on Flikr Moustavi1388

And RiotsinTehran

Awkward Statements of Fact...

1. Observe and Report was funny but evil. Scratch that--evil, and as a result funny. Even Danny McBride was hilarious in it, which, as any regular reader of Awkward Haiku will know, is a near impossibility (ok, he's not bad in East Bound and Down--Awkward Haiku will concede that much)
2. Adventureland was sweet but not funny. Some really pretty moments, but some really poorly done moments as well. None of the characters felt thought out, though the occasional scene reached a place of lyricism. And no laugh.

Production values in silly american movies have gone up a great deal. Sadly so has male frontal nudity.

3. Nichols and May were the funniest pair of people in the history of a nation full of funny people

4. Lots of thoughts on the regional differences between branches of comedy (LA vs. NY vs. UNC grads vs. Chicago), but that'll have to wait. Because for now...

5. AH has been watching way too much comedy

Existentialism and Basketball

And now you have truly lived the intellectual's dilemma. To feel sport and anxiety bound by another's agency? or to blindly coral the reactive emotions of hearing about it the next day? Is existence truly the first of all causes?

Feed the Ball > Existentialism

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