Day Walker Talker

It’s a shitty, rainy day here in Manhattan and for the first time in a while I decided to stay shacked up in my office and have my lunch delivered to me. Little did I know that a mere 83 minutes later I’d feel terrible about myself and ultimately my decision making.

12:55- My stomach emits a sound alerting me that I need nourishment. I’ve only had a banana thus far in the day, and gauge my hunger level at about an 8 out of 10.

1:00- Being as famished as I am I decide the best bet is to order from the establishment with the closest proximity to my mouth. China Gourmet. I call and speak to a very kind, inarticulate woman who sounds as if she’s in the midst of a riot. She can’t understand me, I can’t understand her. But we power through and I have my order of General Tso’s Chicken with fried rice in by 1:05.

1:06- I hang up the phone, as the thought of impending food spikes my hunger level to a 9. I worry the guy won’t get here in time and I’ll have to resort to cannibalism. I look around the office for possible candidates.

1:45- No food has arrived. This is unacceptable, I begin salting my arm. Hunger level 9.5. 

1:55- my telephone rings, and Asian man I can barely understand screams into the receiver on the other end. Transcript:

• “Hello?” I say.
• “Herro, I’m in robby, herro.”
• “Okay I’ll be right down,”
• “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Robby.”

1:57- I’m in the lobby. I see no delivery guy. I walk to the opposite entrance, there is nobody here. I feel a vibration in my side, my stomach must have collapsed and began eating away at itself. I realize it is my phone.

• “Hey man I’m here, where are you?”
• “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
• “What?”
• “Herro? You orda food?”
• “Yes, WHERE ARE YOU? I’m in the lobby.”
• “Yeah, yeah, robby.”

2:01- He hangs up on me. I inhale deeply, meditatively. The guy won’t be able to understand me so how can I make sure he’s at the right building? I call the restaurant again, tell them I’m lost in translation and that the delivery guy is lost. They apologize and instruct me to stay put. They’ll call him now.

2:02- I utter the word “fuck.” Hunger level 10.

2:03- The security guard in the lobby sparks idle chatter. “You know I never understood when people say pardon my French when they say fuck. It’s actually old English.” I search for a blunt implement to strike him with.

2:10- I call this schmohawk again. This time I figure if I sound angry he’ll understand the language I speak. He does not. All he says is “yeah, yeah, yeah.” People that work in the building are entering with their bags of lunch, I strongly consider stealing a bag from a passerby and just jetting down the street. Meditative inhale. Hunger level 11.

2:13- The restaurant calls my phone, ensuring me the delivery guy is in the lobby. I am blown away by their refusal to believe me when I tell them he’s lost.

2:15- FINALLY. An Asian walks through the revolving doors holding a white plastic bag. I rush him like an Olympic sprinter.

• “He man sorry for all the confusion. How much?”
• The gentleman stares at me blankly. I’m furious he can’t understand even the most simple consumerism lingo of the English language.
• “China Gourmet, right?” I ask.
• “No…My name is David…I work on the 28th floor. This is my sandwich”

2:17-  I walk through the rain to the nearest deli. That awkward moment when you realize you’ve just displayed a grotesque form of unintentional racism. Meditative inhale.

Over the weekend I was installing my grandmothers VHS player (her refusal to adapt to any time period past 1975 is infuriating) when she asked me, “so my handsome guy what do you want for Christmas this year?” I usually tell my sweet old grandma that I don’t want anything and am happy to just hang with her for the weekend, but since that answer has prompted her to buy me the same cologne I asked for in 6th grade (which I stopped wearing in 7th)  every year since 1994 I decided I’d better compile my first Christmas list in awhile so I don’t end up with any of these:

1. The Sweater: You get one every year and the only thing worse then the thought of actually wearing it is asking for a receipt to return it. Since I can’t bring myself to pop that question I have a box in my attic filled with sweaters that appear to have been designed by Ray Charles. Crayola doesn’t even have as many colors as this box does.        
2. Video Poker: Grandma I have an I-phone. I can get satellite imagery, stock tickers, shop online and as you recently discovered instantly pull up any Paul Anka music video your sweet heart desires. Guess what else I can do? Play freaking video poker, ONLINE with actual money. Stop buying these. 
3. Winter’s coming: A cornucopia of cold weather survival gear. A winter hat, gloves, thermal socks, hand/ feet warmers all crammed into one clothing box that she’s had stored in a closet since the Reagan administration. I tolerated it until last year, when she added the “ice shoe covers.” I live in Manhattan grandma, and no not the Manhattan in “The Day After Tomorrow.”
4. The HSN gift of the year: It can come in the form of any gadget grandma thinks is actually enhancing her knowledge of technology that year. Last year I received a “you can’t lose it” universal television remote that beeps when you press the “locate” button on a separate smaller remote. I lost both (perhaps intentionally). The year before I stared in wonderment at an “extendable panoramic rear-view mirror” for the car I sold a year before when I moved into Manhattan. This year I suspect something liken to this manscaping must have, the electrical back hair shaver. 

I love you Grandma but I’m running out of room to store all this useless shit I can never use. A list is on the way, handwritten of course since you still haven’t embraced email.

There was a time, and John Cusack can attest to this, when you could break up with a chick and experience a very therapeutic reinvention. Regardless of whether you were the “dumper” or “dumpee” there was a timeline of events that would eventually lead you to this reinvention. At least that’s what John Hughes and most of late eighties “rom-coms” would have us believe, but Mark Zuckerberg changed that forever. Here’s a list of often necessary “break-up” stages that Facebook has forever changed.

1. The Going Public Stage: The moment after the “we need to talk” meeting has concluded, both parties are left with a void inside. If you were the dumper, and plotted this break-up weeks in advance, you don’t feel as relieved as you’d thought during the planning phase. Instead you are filled with an unrelenting guilt ridden nausea, as your former counterpart probably likens you to Mola Ram from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBIdcUxdgo0). If you’re the dumpee, you feel like a kid who knows he’s about to get a shitty report card. Right now it hasn’t hit, you know once it does it will suck but you still go about as if you’re aloof to it’s reality. This numb feeling can sometimes last for days but always ends the same, one day the mailman will have that report card and once your parents know your immediate response will be “I have no idea how that happened! It must be a mistake!” Facebook has erased the luxury of gradually going public with the break up and allowing the numbness and guilty feelings to subside before telling loved ones. Because immediately after the relationship ends, both parties now have to part ways with their partners online persona, changing their relationship status to “single” or “it’s complicated.” Which is always met with a slew of commentary from friends ranging from “sorry hun, hope you’re okay” to “:(.”
2. Wish You Were Here Montage: The next stage in the film is that scene where Cusack and his love interest (in whatever movie you’re watching) both go through a “heartache montage.” The ones where the guy stares longingly out the window on an empty rain soaked street bathing in self pity while simultaneously shots of his girl hugging teddy bears and staring at photographs of them when they were together are juxtaposed to the soothing vocal styling of Alanis Morissette. You think “if only they could each see each other in such brutal anguish! They’d definitely be able to reconcile.” Well Zuckerberg sucked all the intrigue from this stage, now you log onto an ex’s facebook page after a breakup and see Adele’s “Someone Like You” music video accompanied with similar “he doesn’t deserve you” and “stay strong” comments. 
3. Is He/she Still Thinking About Me Stage: this is when John reaches out, much to the behest of his guy friends, to his ex’s best friend. He claims he “needs closure” but in reality all he wants is to know who she’s been screwing while he cries himself to sleep. This is perhaps the only stage Zuckerberg has abolished that serves as a betterment to mankind. Because now you can sign on Facebook and see photographs of your ex, if she dumped you she’ll have photos of her with all her friends at some expensive night club, or if you dumped her there will be photos of her in a scantily clad dress with a caption about how much weight she’s lost. Regardless the person on the other end will over analyze the photograph and most likely it’s meaning, because that’s what you do when you’re going through this. You constantly over analyze.
4. Purging Stage: At a certain point in the arch of Cusack he comes to a realization that life isn’t stopping for his heart break. He needs to turn off Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman,” and go out with the friends he’s been ignoring whilst waiting for a text or phone call from her. But before he can do this he needs to purge her from his life. Normally in the film his best friend will arrive to John’s musty, hasn’t been cleaned in weeks, apartment. They’ll gather all the photographs, gifts, cards, trinkets and what have you that serve as memory to the relationship, throw them all in a trash can and light it on fire. This is usually done best with a bottle of hard liquor that both men ceremoniously pass back and forth while they stare at the final remnants of a love that once was. Then they’ll hit the strip club. There’s no purging memories on Facebook, nope, those memories will always be somewhere in cyber space, forever embedded in our online lives. We can “detag” ourselves, but they’ll always be there. ALWAYS.
5. Can’t Go On Without You Stage: Sometimes months later. She’s got a new man, she doesn’t love you anymore and your attempts to stand outside her house with a boombox have fallen flat. It’s time to push the big red button in your arsenal and issue a cry for help. “I don’t think I can go on living without you,” Cusack will utter trying to garner any fleeting pity from his ex. He’s not serious about suicide, but he figures something this drastic will at least get her thinking about him again. I’m sure that this stage is still practiced by some, but with social media you’re able to actually follow through. John doesn’t have to kill himself with Facebook, he can defreind her…or perhaps even more dramatic, scroll to the top right of his page and click “DEACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT.” John’s dead to the Facebook world now, he’s off the grid. Is he happy about it? Probably not, because now he’s thinking about whether she realizes he’s dead or not.
6. Vindication Stage: Cusack now has found another girl, she may be just a rebound who he’ll throw to the curb once he’s fully healed but nevertheless she serves a critical purpose in his reinvention. One day he’ll be out with said female, and who will walk into the same bar/restaurant? His soulless ex of course, she’ll see him and then see the new girl. This is a moment of triumph for John because whether she’s still into him or not, this new girl will become an idol of jealousy for her. This is perhaps the worst thing Zuckerberg has robbed us of, because now the moment our new relationship blossoms we’re back on Facebook. We’re posting candid photos of ourselves hugging at the Rockefeller Center tree lighting, and updating our statuses to imply our utter happiness (whether real or not). Our exes will see this, she’ll be able to keep tabs on who we’re seeing. They’ll know them by name, by occupation, they’ll even know when you met. Then when you run into said ex on that fateful random night of vindication, she’ll already have judged everything about this person and realized she’s better than her. So much for Johnny’s vindication. (There’s also something very pathetic about posing for photographs with a new girl/guy and posting them on your Facebook as a social media bear trap)

In conclusion, John Cusack is dead to rights in Zuckerberg’s world…He doesn’t even have a chance. In the 80’s he was a hopeless romantic, in 2011…He’s a stalker.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” – The Wizard of Oz

It’s the most sought after prize in professional sports, the Holy Grail in the eyes of 32 owners, 1,696 players and countless fans. I’m talking of course about the “Lombardi Trophy” and being a part of the NFL franchise that hoists it above their heads after the Super Bowl.  I’ve sat in front of the television on that fateful February Sunday for twenty-seven years of my life. Some years I was too young to remember, others I was too drunk to remember, but I was always there. I was participating in the spectacle that nets the second largest food consumption numbers (next to thanksgiving), regardless of my coherency. There are a lot of factors at play during this nearly four hour broadcast. You’ve got your players, whom are in charge of providing an epic clash of the titans that will one day warrant a majestic orchestra composition to tell its story on NFL Films. You’ve got your bookies, who are taking bets on nearly every facet of the experience (Jennifer Hudson screwed me in 2009 when she thought she’d get cute and hold the word “free” for nearly four full seconds during the final bar of the National anthem, shattering my chances of hitting the under on her performance time). You’ve got your advertisers, who see our infatuation with the game as a Mecca, wrought with commercial opportunity. You’ve got your American (yes if you don’t watch the Super Bowl you’re no American), our job is to consume everything in sight be it advertising, beer or your mother’s seven layer bean dip. We’re all critical to the experience that makes Super Bowl Sunday a practiced U.S. holiday. Perhaps the most critical variable of all though is that man behind the curtain, the network that broadcasts it. When companies are paying you upward of three million dollars per thirty second spot you need to ensure the eyes (however glossy) remain on the screen for the duration of the broadcast and one of the biggest weapons in their arsenal is the half-time show.

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the Super Bowl half-time show. Not because it ends up being seemingly the only definitive moment for a majority of the people that endure the broadcast, but because it represents the finished product of a plan the network executives have schemed to hold the attention of nearly every demographic in the country. Since 2006, when ABC’s contract with the national football league expired, there have been three ponies in the Super Bowl broadcast race (NBC, CBS, FOX). The NFL capped off their biggest television season ever in 2011 with the nations most watched program in history, Super Bowl XLV. Reportedly 111 million viewers tuned in to see the Packers out last the Steelers on FOX, a product perhaps of the – at the time – record viewership CBS drew in 2010. As the amount of viewers climb, so do the cost to advertise and the pressure to keep us watching that broadcast. NBC will take center stage in 2012 and after last years success hope to surpass their competitors reining them Super Bowl supreme. Then the cycle starts over again and CBS will plan 2013, followed by FOX in 2014 (a game close to my heart as it’s played at my team’s home stadium in East Rutherford’s, MetLife Stadium). Some will argue that regardless of the network the Super Bowl is the Super Bowl, and there is no real pressure to keep us watching. I completely agree that during the first and last hour and a half of the broadcast the game is what’s captivating and there is utterly zero competition on the air waves, but that thirty to forty minutes in-between halves is always up for grabs. In 1992 CBS dropped the ball during halftime producing a grandiose cultural extravaganza led by Gloria Estefan, Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill. I couldn’t tell you how miserable it was, since I didn’t even stay tuned in for a moment of the performance. The show wasn’t really a factor in many people’s Super Bowl Sunday that year, since many viewers turned their channels to FOX where “In Living Color” was airing a live broadcast during half time. Viewership for the CBS broadcast tanked during half time and all the commercials aired during that time simply weren’t hitting their target audiences in the numbers companies had hoped. This was in an era before YouTube and the viewer’s ability to ingest media from the internet almost instantly after it’s happened. So if your commercial aired on CBS during half-time in 1992…it wasn’t seen by a majority of the Super Bowl audience. The following year NBC was faced with the challenge of fixing this problem, so they booked Michael Jackson. The live performance shot half time ratings through the roof and to this day no half time show has reached the bar set by the King of Pop. Everyone was so caught up in the moment nobody even found it somewhat alarming that NBC had Michael close the set with a perverse rendition of “Heal the World,” where he would be joined on stage with over five hundred children singing and dancing with him (months later when he was brought up on child molestation charges I’m sure people began to feel differently). The bench mark had been set and networks knew that rock shows were the cash crop of Super Bowl half-time. But it was still met with downward pressure, as the cost to book these acts was very high. Networks would use the half time show to shamelessly promote other programming on their network. ABC had an Indiana Jones show in 1995, where Indiana was trying to steal the Lombardi Trophy in an effort to promote the new Disney attraction based off the film. The only thing Indy ended up stealing that night was the thirty minutes he took from everyone watching the scene live. Some years ensemble casts were disjointedly parading around the stadium trying to gain the favor of every genre of music fan (Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Aerosmith, Britney Spears and a young N’sync on the same stage?). In 1996 the NFL celebrated thirty years of Super Bowl magic with a live performance by Diana Ross where she finished her final song and turned around to an idling helicopter on the fifty yard line that whisked her away into the night before the start of the 3^rd quarter (one of the most bazaar scenes in half time history). In 1999 FOX decided that it would stray from the successful template, and would once again enlist the services of Gloria Estefan. If you poll ten people on the street and ask them if they remember Stevie Wonder driving Gloria to the stage during halftime in an old school Bentley, I’m willing to bet nine of them had no clue it even happened (and yes, FOX seriously did have Stevie behind the wheel of an automobile). Out of those ten people polled now ask how many saw Mankind and The Rock fight in an empty arena for the WWE championship? 6.6 million people watched Mankind win the title during “Halftime Heat”, a number that may have been a lot lower had FOX listened to my cardinal rule of half time shows; never book Gloria Estefan. Rockers like ZZ Top, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Paul McCartney (who had the near impossible task of performing a year after “nipplegate”), The Boss, The Rolling Stones and U2 have all shined in Super Bowl half time light. My personal favorite show was in 2002 when U2 took the stage 5 months after 911 and tore the roof off the Superdome. The two thousands (what the hell are we calling this decade now?), were dominated by these bands and the networks cashed in because of it. But once you reach a certain point you’re just going to run out of performers on that elite level. When I watched the 2011 half time show and saw The Black Eyed Peas lowered onto a spaceship looking set from the rafters in glowing LED paneled costumes I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach. Are the days of rock & roll half time shows dead?

I thought about 2014, when I’d have the only opportunity in my life (to this point) to attend the game, who will headline my first live show? These thoughts were backdrop to about one hundred dancers, all wearing glowing one piece unitards, surrounding the “band” on stage as they began their performance with the song that plays in many of our nightmares; “I’ve Got A Feeling.” Maybe I was in the minority but nothing about this performance led me to believe this was going to be a “good good night.” I began drinking faster. The Black Eyed Peas are representative of the future, they’re billed as a “band” with ability to transport you to space and back. They’re a “band” that mixes auto tuned sounds and lyrics about spaceships with thinly veiled sexual innuendos. The fist pumping, red bull driven nation of today eats them up. I sighed, “If the Black Eyed Peas represent the future, then does that mean the bands I’ve loved during half time are the past?” I asked myself. Before I could ask it aloud, a higher power answered it for me. I watched as Slash was hydraulically raised from beneath the stage, he was playing a tasty lick from the popular Guns and Roses jam “Sweet Child of Mine.” Now it is no secret at this point that Slash has sold out and most likely would play a sweet sixteen for the right price, but regardless he epitomized rock and roll to me. Then Fergie started making her way to the stage, and Will.I.Am started screaming, “beat the beat,” over the power chords. The moment Fergie opened her cavernous mouth and uttered the first word of Axl Roses most popular song, in the tune of what sounded like the yelling goat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0-lkl9TzsU), I knew that rock was being crucified in front of me and America. The shows ratings weren’t even half bad which was ridiculous, since it was one of the worst I’ve witnessed. Is this the half time show of tomorrow? Will pop stars like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, or the Jonas Brothers be given the keys to my half time show? Will Chris Martin and Coldplay be awkwardly gyrating on stage to love ballads like “Yellow,” and “Fix You?” God I hope not (admittedly depending on the set list, Coldplay would be a great show). The beauty of being able to watch the game from home is that I can turn off the bad half time shows and tune into something more entertaining, if I’m at the stadium though…I’m forced to watch. I’d love to see rockers like Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, Green Day, The Foo Fighters, Neil Diamond, The Eagles, maybe even Rush or the Chili Peppers. I’d even be content with bands like Muse, Mumford and Sons, Incubus, or even a rap star like Jay-Z or Eminem. Are they prolific enough to garner the interest of a younger audience? Or is the Black Eyed Peas demographic slowly taking control of one of my favorite past times. I can live with looking to my left and right during a Van Halen performance and seeing a mullet bound football fan rocking out to the sound of his generation. I fear it’ll be the inverse though, and I’ll look like the out of place old guy standing next to females like the ones below. If that happens I don’t know what I’ll do. But hey, at least it won’t be Gloria Estefan.

“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” – Dean Vernon Wormer

I have always considered myself somewhat of a decent person. That decency is hinged on my genuine care for the human condition and my inherent goodness. A goodness that is often paradox to my sense of humor since most of what I consider to be funny can be conceded as being mean spirited. I’m prefacing the ensuing rant with this proclamation for really only one reason, I’m about to sound like a complete dick. It was late this Sunday evening; the Jets had just nearly completed another colossal disappointment of a football game and I was left with a stagnant (sadly familiar) taste in my mouth so I changed the channel. FX was airing the 2008 comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” The then portly Jonah Hill was in the midst of a scene with Jason Segal and despite my frustration with my beloved Jets something strange happened, I laughed. This momentary bliss was quickly replaced with a feeling of epiphany which then made way to betrayal. I realized that Jonah Hill may never be able to make me this happy again and I attributed it entirely with his decision to “get healthy.” Something about fat is funny and in Jonah’s case he should err on the side of caution when taking Dean Vernon Wormer’s advice from “Animal House.” For some people it’s the opposite. For some people fat, drunk and stupid is the only way to go through life.

Now I’m not saying Jonah Hill is drunk and stupid. I’m not even saying that he’s fat; he’s in fact the opposite.  What I’m saying is that all the roles that made Jonah Hill, Jonah Hill, have been surrounding his weight, stupidity and ability to consume alcohol allowing hilarity to ensue. Abandoning your core audience and attempting to completely restructure your artistic expression is an ambitious undertaking to say the very least (see: Joaquin Phoenix). I have a fat friend, his name is Pete. I love him. Pete couldn’t even be classified as fat in comparison to many over weight people in America. However in my circle he’s our “fat friend,” and if you asked any one of the guys in this circle what they’d think of Pete if he decided to get healthy they would all lead with answers of utter disappointment. Pete provides something in our group; he provides a life without consequence. He’s never taken himself seriously and has often done some of the dumbest things I’ve ever been witness to. It’s in this lifestyle alone that makes me adore Pete most. His weight allows him to get away with almost anything and it’s not only acceptable behavior it’s celebrated.  In the summer of 2002, when “Austin Power’s: Goldmember” was in the apex of its existence and Pete and I were freshman at a local community college, we went to a nearby block party with our entire circle of friends. Fast-forward thirty Natural Light cans and four hours and we are standing in the bedroom of one of the neighborhood kids from the party. One of my closest friends had left the fiesta an hour before to pursue premarital intercourse with a girl he’d been pining over at the time. From the third story window we could see into one of the neighboring yards where said friend and his companion lay on a gigantic pool float fully clothed in the middle of the deep-end (why they were fully clothed and floating in a pool is a story for another day). Suddenly from three backyards over we see a husky, fully nude, gentleman scaling fences like an Olympian hurdler. It’s Pete. Upon closer investigation he’s painted his penis gold. Before any of my friends could begin to process this atrocity Pete hurled himself into the deep end of the pool screaming “LOOK AT MY GOLD MEMBER.” The float tipped and both my fully clothed friend and his escort fell into the water. Pete immediately got out of the pool and began his escape, which was met with much resistance from my now soaking wet friend. This moment was one of the defining moments of my college life and is still talked and laughed about today. The point of this tangent isn’t to give you insight into some of the ridiculous things my friends do. The point is that this is unacceptable behavior. Had Pete been very skinny and healthy this would not only have not been funny behavior; it would have been borderline homosexual behavior. Since Pete sports a very well pronounced muffin-top waistline this action went from appalling to downright epic. Now Jonah Hill has never done anything this extreme, at least to my knowledge, but the point remains evident. When you’re the “fat friend” you aren’t gaining societal acceptance with your looks or anything material so you overcompensate with personality. You naturally develop somewhat of a humorous personality because comedy is the best way to gain likeability. It can be argued that Jonah was not only somebody’s “fat friend” he was also Hollywood’s and therefore the worlds. His decision to rob us of this relationship leaves us with a void which may not get filled.

I grew up with Chris Farley, the generation before me; John Candy, my father; John Belushi, my grandfather; Curly from the Three Stooges. It’s an archetype that has been prominent in cinema since its inception. Can you imagine a world where Matt Foley, motivational speaker, was a thin health nut? A world where Homer Simpson was doing sit-ups instead of eating doughnuts? I can’t. I make one exception to this and that’s Belushi. I think he transcended his weight and was just a very, very, funny dude. His mannerisms and timing were impeccable so if one day Belushi decided to drop sixty pounds I think he could still hold the reigns of a comic genius. It’s a twisted and dark realization where you look at a man like Farley’s career and surmise that his success was solely based on his ability to remain a glutton. Had he not died and began taking care of himself I don’t think society would have held him in the high regard they still do to this day. To quote an associate of mine, “Chris Farley knew something was going to die either himself or his career. He chose the former.” It’s incredibly shallow I know, but I find it somewhat believable too. We as a society like familiarity, things that don’t seem right bother us. I never thought Drew Carey was ever funny but I thought his show was. Now I look at a man who’s literally the shell of his former self hosting “The Price Is Right” and I want to force feed him back into social acceptance. He’s looking more and more like the jubilant, dancing old bag of bones from the Six Flags commercials and to me much unhealthier than he ever did fat. This has absolutely nothing to do with the notion you can lose the weight but you never really lose the skin. Leaving once heavy people with somewhat of a windsock look of extra skin. It’s more about our conditioned expectations as a society. We’re conditioned to see Jonah Hill as “that fat kid from Superbad” and never that “funny kid from Superbad.” Was he funnier because he was fat? We don’t really have enough of a sample size of his work as a thin man to pass judgment. His speech at the VMA’s, where he equated his weight loss to a chicken crossing the road to get in shape was a flat out snoozer.  “It’s the same chicken!” he yelled. You could tell by the expressions in the audience that everyone was very uncomfortable with the commentary. Jonah was never that self aware and now seemed very awkward in his own skin. Conversely he recently appeared on “The Jimmy Fallon Show,” where he recounted a hilarious story when he first arrived at the Fox upfronts to promote his new animated show “Alan Gregory”(If you want to see either of these performances you can youtube them). I thought the interview was great, and he made me laugh several times making me rethink my thesis of this entire essay. I think the success of Alan Gregory will offer no perspective on this debate, is fat funny? Because the animated character, although lean, is voiced by Jonah. We will automatically associate this voice with the face of our “fat kid from Superbad.” In a recent interview with Esquire magazine, Jonah was promoting his first serious movie “Moneyball.” When asked what type of movie it was if not a baseball movie he answered, “I’m making an underdog movie, I’m making a movie about people who are taken at face value and aren’t seen for more than what they are at first appearance.” I found this answer to be very interesting because, regardless of it’s relevance to “Moneyball”, Jonah seemed to be intentionally dropping this metaphor to help process his new venture as a serious actor pitting him against the world and making him an underdog. That didn’t seem like something the old Jonah would have felt necessary to do because he never took himself that seriously and could care less what critics or people said.

This metaphor made me realize perhaps the most enamoring idea of this entire social commentary. It’s a philosophy that I’ll deem “Klumpism” (working title). In 1996, Eddie Murphy released perhaps his funniest film in over 20 years “The Nutty Professor” (ironic that I found the one movie he wore a fat suit funniest). You’ve all seen the film so I’ll spare the paper on describing it in depth. Eddie Murphy played a heavy science professor named, Sherman Klump. He was working on a genetic formula that would eliminate fat cells in the human body. Enter the beautiful Carla Purty, who’s a big fan of Klump’s research. When Purty and Klump first meet, Sherman is conversational quicksand. He’s got zero confidence and non existent self esteem. Why would Purty fall for a man so physically unattractive and socially uncomfortable? Sherman does what any of us would want to do in this situation; he takes the formula to eliminate his fat cells. Enter Buddy Love. Buddy exudes all the characteristics that the heavy community long for, most importantly confidence. Carla falls for the charismatic Buddy in no time at all but her infatuation is short lived as she realizes Buddy’s true character. Sherman is sweet, genuine, modest and above all else caring. Buddy is the opposite; he’s pretentious, unkind, and dishonest. In the climax of the film Buddy is pitching his formula to all the “rich dummies” in the room, passing off the research as his own. He vows to take the formula and put Sherman to rest forever. A struggle ensues where Sherman battles from inside with his now toned doppelganger Buddy Love. It ends with Sherman standing on the stage in tattered clothing. Disappointed in himself he tells the room why he felt it was necessary to take the formula, social acceptance. This is the theme of the entire film; beauty is on the interior not the exterior. When Sherman was heavy he was self conscious and self aware, he didn’t think he could get anything with his weight so he took drastic measures. With Hill it’s the inverse almost. Heavy, he never had any self esteem issues, he had what seemed to be a glowing confidence and his ability to make us laugh transcended his physical appearance. Now thin though he seems overly self conscious (probably because people are writing articles like this), he’s dropping metaphors to gain peoples pity and seems to have lost some of the confidence and care free personality that made us fall in love with him in the first place. I’ve mentioned earlier we don’t have enough of a sample size to determine if Jonah is just as funny thin and maybe these defense mechanisms he’s currently deploying will deteriorate and he’ll go back to his naturally funny demeanor. But one thing he can never go back to is being Hollywood’s “fat friend.” You simply can’t put toothpaste back in the tube. Jonah took what I’d imagine to be a calculated risk; he thinks he can be just as funny thin. He’s outwardly commenting on how great being healthy feels and how he’s never felt better in his life. I’m happy for him. I wish him the best and hope that he continues on successfully. I only worry that one day, if he ends up not being as funny, he’ll be sitting in his kitchen staring longingly at a White Castle Crave case and he’ll down Professor Klump’s formula to return to a form he thinks society accepts. What will that say about us?