Modern Guilt

Rebecca Black's "Friday" video -- and, more importantly, the widespread negativity towards it -- spread like wildfire across the internet last week, and other important contextual setup that I don't care to add. Basically, the song is a vapid, auto-tuned mess made by a company who specializes in promoting acts that consistently remind me of rich parents hocking their kids to companies because they have the money to make viral video. It summarizes everything that's wrong with modern music. Except that it doesn't.

Many of the comments I've read about the video focus not only on how awful the song is, but also on how it represents the downfall of modern music. It has auto-tune. It stars a fabricated idol singing about friends and weekends and other stuff that lacks the depth of pop music of the past. And clearly, to someone who's outgrown pop music and thus hasn't kept up with it, this is trash and symptomatic of a larger problem.

Let's put aside the fact that the song is terrible. Because yeah, it is. And frankly, my arguments against this line of thinking can summed up perfectly in the "rose-colored glasses," argument. People who haven't grown up around this kind of music clearly see it as foreign, and will quickly dismiss it and go back to longing for the pop music of the past. Like many people who are bemoaning the loss of the morals in society, they assume a downward trend in in quality when the changes are really exposure and options.

But propping "Friday" up as the representation of "modern music" obviously ignores quite a few factors. First, there's all the progressive and indie stuff that garner high MetaCritic scores that exists outside pop music. Second, "Friday" isn't even actual pop music; it's made a relatively small company for who the song is an outlier in terms of its popularity. Though it's tempting to group them all together, Rebecca Black is ultimately not in the same category as Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift. If you're to beat on a straw man, at least make sure it's the right one.

I named my Tepig Bumfunk

It doesn't take long for any conversation about Pokemon -- specifically the games -- to come to the point of the games' rehashed formula. And it's a fair point to make; playing the Black version, I'm consistently surprised by how much of the game is retained from Red and Blue. I understand that the reason the games don't change their fundamental design is because each version serves as an introduction for new players, and that Game Freak believes that style works well.

And it does. By the time you defeat the first Gym Leader you know enough about how the game works to be able to dig into the game's collecting and battling. I'm not afraid to admit that Pokemon's simple battle system still packs enough allure and strategy to keep me engaged. The reveals new Pokemon (the creatures, not the game) still follow the same pattern as previous games (you'll get a ton of boring "Normal" types before you start finding some of the more exotic species), but the visual difference is enough to make the experience seem new. When I see a new wild Pokemon, I want to catch it. When I see a fellow trainer, I want to bury their critters' faces in the dirt. The basic elements of the game still work remarkably well, and I'm sure Game Freak knows it.

But that doesn't mean there aren't places to improve, at least from the perspective of someone who's played most versions of the game. For one, the early parts of the game feature so much mandatory hand-holding that I almost turned my DS off from boredom more than once. The game asks the player if they need few things explained to them, but they need to take it all the way: allow veterans the chance to skip the introductions of what a Pokemon is, how the world works and how to heal your captive friends at the Pokemon Center. So the PokeMart is now embedded in the Center? Cool. I could've figured that out myself.

But, despite the game's superfluous foreword, I'm still going, if no other reason than the title of this post.

Louie

Louie's a lo-fi comedy show that stars a stand-up comedian, so you have certain expectations going in. For one, it's going to be funny. Second, it'll be edgy, particularly considering the raw, brash, and foul-mouthed talent involved (Louie C.K. is like a less ). The half-hour shows usually stick to self-contained episodes that don't focus on progression, so you expect to be able to pick it up from any episode without missing too much.

Louie does meet those expectations. The stand-up comedy bits are as dark, inhumane and frank as you'd expect (which is a good thing), and the situations in the show would all fit as stand-up bits. But what works best about the show -- and what separates it from other comedy shows -- is its tone. The show focuses largely on just how depressing C.K.'s life is: A divorce this late in his life means he's almost completely out of the dating pool, his kids cause him the kind of stress that only someone you love unconditionally can cause, and generally, he feels like a shitty person. It's dark and unrelenting in how much bad "behind-the-scenes," stuff it shows. You never get the sense that the show is reaching for comedy; every scene takes place with C.K.'s half-fictional life, and the show comes off a gritty comedy show, strange as it sounds.

And as you get into the later episodes, you'll begin to see just how much drama Louie can pack into its half-hour. Episodes 9 and 11 specifically stand right on the edge of the comedy/drama line, and the show knows how to straddle that line. Its actual comedy bits (those outside the stand-up segments) can be hit of miss, but surprisingly enough, the more serious segments tend to be the most well-executed ones. There are huge chunks of episodes where the comedy is intentionally sparse, and those still manage to be entertaining, much like when a comedian launches into ranting or preaching during a segment, at least when those bits are done well.

Where C.K. takes the show in the second season is anyone's guess, but I hope it continues to alternate itself between its The Office-like awkwardness, its well-executed comedy bits, and Titus-level of black comedy. It may not completely revolutionize the half-hour comedy formula, but it definitely takes it in a great new direction.