Opinions Vary: Smile, Liking Things Is Awesome

Preamble.
When Eduardo Pluto first tasked me with writing this column, I was very much the-excite. I viewed it as an opportunity to pull apart my cheeks and bathe a litany of things in my steaming hate. It was a bona fide excuse to wield a hate-katana, slicing at the various things for which I held contempt. However, I began to waver in this task the more I thought about it. Slathering stupidity over a variety of topics in an effort to rile up the masses went against the very grain of OMEGA LEVEL, a site whose unofficial motto I’ve always felt was, “LIKING THINGS IS AWESOME.” So that’s not what I shall be doing here during my turn at Opinions Vary.

No, no it shant be.

Instead, I’m aiming to pump-up the pectorals of various things I enjoy. Specifically, the ones that have themselves been kicked in the pink goodies until they were mush. I’m going to prop the ground beef genitals of emaciated movies, books, video games, and sexual positions that I enjoy.

Strap in, and strap on. I’m about to blast your g-spot with positivity. When you’re done throwing rope, I’m going to kiss you upon the head and leave you be.

The first topic whose chest I’m going to rub with Hot&Cold?

The arts themselves.

Relax everyone, the arts are still beautiful.

The Past isn’t as good as you remember it.
One of the more common complaints I come across from loved ones, vagabonds, the very Slurpee Machine at 7-Eleven itself (it talks to me in Latin), is that we are suffering through some nadir in the arts. “Oh, comic books suck now”, or “Man, video games have gone to shit this generation”, and the ubiquitous “Movies aren’t nearly as good as they were in 19XX.”

Bullshit.

Hogwash.

Without a doubt, the past has birthed countless loves. Holy fuck, that is an obvious statement. While we’re at it: cumming feels great, Jennifer Lawrence’s ass can cure cancer (if she’d just let me lick it), Steven Tyler looks like a woman, and I’m one bad day from ending up back at an in-patient ward. Seriously though, there is a tendency to coat yesteryear in a honeyed glow. I hear this the most when it comes to movies. The main problem with this belief is that Hollywood has always been a hegemonic Leviathan churning out UTTER DRECK en masse. What happens is that our psyche sifts through the debris, and we only recall the dope stuff.

Same thing goes for radio.

People always barf up nonsense like “Oh man, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones! Whatever happened to the good old days when people like them chewed up the charts?” Yeah, that’s because whatever sort of Machinations the Capitalism Corporate Rock Machine propelled to the top have been lost to antiquity. Without a doubt we tend to romanticize the past, myself included. We latch onto the passing years as paragons of artistic splendor. And it ain’t that they didn’t contain gems. Rather, they also contained remarkable amounts of fecaltainment.

We don’t appreciate the moment.
A couple of weeks ago, The Faux Bot and myself got into a banter about the current gaming generation. We were both a couple shades of bullshit about the preeminence of the yearly gaming cycle for certain franchises. Both of us had raw nipples from frequent frantic twerking at the spreading of microtransactions.  Every time Electronic Arts forced another game to resemble Gears of War, we would twist each other’s nipples until we passed out. Pain therapy. For whatever reason, we never spoke about why we both woke up covered in fluid and without pants.

But the thing is, and I tried to make this point to him, is that this generation has also brought with it a cavalcade of awesome titles. For every awful botched-abortion like Dead Space 3 that wriggled its little battered body onto the shelves, there was a Skyrim. This generation also saw the rise of independent games. You don’t like big blockbuster titles? Find yourself a Fez, or an FTL. Even enormous corporate anal gapes could surprise. Don’t tell me you saw Far Cry 3 coming.

Is gaming sporting some troubling spots? Some oozing sores upon its tip? Certainly. However, it is still rubbing the prostate in many ways as well.

Knee-jerk reactions can be awesome. There is something visceral about feeling such intense emotion, but more often than not they push opinions to either extreme. Gaming is brilliant. Gaming is flawed. It can be both. There could be awful movies burning churned out by Hollywood. No doubt. At the same time, there are countless wonderful films arriving every year. Unfortunately, most people love embracing the snark and condemning the moment. It’s easier. Ease. That’s another reason that I don’t agree with people down on the arts. Most of the time they’re lazy, not willing to writhe up out of the Main Stream and take a look around.

Dope shit is happening, just open your eyes.
There is no doubt that I am moderately dissatisfied with the Big Two in comics these days. Instead of focusing on character-driven stories, Marvel and DC are satisfied to continue jacking off Superman, and Captain America. Fatigued, their dongs barf up tired Events. “Stop!”, they cry. But Quesada and Johns cackle! “Nay! Nay! Superman Year Zero: New 52 shall save the industry!” Yet, I would be an errant bastard if I dismissed comic books as a medium.

There is a difference between the Main Stream letting us down as consumers of art, and the arts not offering up anything good.

It’s easier to pull up the local MEGAPLEX’S SHOWINGS and bitch and moan at the movie listings. Big Movie X, Romantic Comedy Y, Remake Z. Takes zero effort. Same goes for comic books. Absolutely no effort is involved in walking up to the Rack on a given week and sticking your nose up at the offerings from the Major Players.

What does take effort is interrogating the newsfeeds for what titles indie artists are putting out (shameless plug: contemplate how many assholes think comics are dragging and haven’t read OMNI). In order to see John Dies at the End, you may need to not rely on the advertisements you see on TV. You may need to drive to a theater you don’t normally go to.

Listen, I’m a pretty lazy fuck myself. Friday evenings are pizza and television, as I drool down my hairy chest. The drool mixes with my stupor, congealing into pure American corpulent failure around my balls. I just can’t mistake my own laziness with a lack of wonderful efforts being put out by a variety of people in a myriad of arts. For fuck’s sake, we have the Internet.

Yes: There has never been a larger medium for idiots to pump out countless dumb shit.

Yes, also: There has never been a larger medium for talented people to put out their works.

We just have to look. It takes effort. It requires us to acknowledge that maybe things totally aren’t ruinous, and maybe there are some gems amongst the eternal bung droppings the main stream has always churned out in nauseating numbers.

There are ups and downs, how you ride them are up to you.
It is erroneous to deny that there aren’t ebbs and flow in the quality of works. I’ll cop to that. Certainly different eras will yield different amounts of outstanding artistic endeavors. I am not naive enough to deny this. At the same time, we can’t really sift through the moments as they occur and successfully ordain them as integral movements. That only comes through retrospection. Wasn’t nobody calling the Harlem Renaissance the Harlem Renaissance while Langston Hughes and Zora Neal Hurston were penning their gems.

So what do we do in this fleeting (illusory?) present? We can’t know if we’re living in some Golden Age. We could condemn the amount of bullshit that is coming out. We will always be able to do that. Or, we can put some effort into it. Hunt down the works by the inspiring artists. Focus on the positive. Maybe they won’t be there in a quantity that we find favorable. (And frankly, if everything is awesome, we wouldn’t appreciate the genius works anyways.) But awesome video games, comic books, movies, and albums are always coming out.

Smile.

Liking things is awesome.