Look Out, Ryan's Gone Meta

“Rock and roll, on a certain level, is a bunch of bullshit. But music is not.”
---Trey Anastasio, “Bittersweet Motel”

So much of what passes for blogging these days, so near as I can tell, is tantamount to plain ol’ bitchery. You’ve got someone either telling you how wrong something/someone is, or snarking their way through their target of choice. The rest…well, they seem happy to tell you exactly what they had for breakfast, morsel by morsel. Either way, there’s a certain level of inertia going on.

I myself have been of course not unaffected by this general malaise---combine a few 12-hour workdays in a row plus New England’s still-lacking Spring, and you’ve got yourself a generally uninteresting RyGuy. I can only have so many reader-supported polls before the curtain’s pulled back and the Wizard here looks like an old man. Oh wait, I already do. Nevermind.

I guess a lot of this article spoke to a lot of my discontent with the tendency towards pessimism and sarcasm as the only methods of analysis. Sure, I love to snark with the best of them, but it gets flat out exhausting to maintain that level of detached cool. Mixing it up is cool. Admitting you actually LIKE something in pop culture that isn't hipper-than-thou is cool.

Keeps both myself and you on our collective toes. I can make fun of J. Lo until the cows come home, but really:

• I’m making fun of someone I don’t know who makes a lot more than me.


• I’m fairly certain that, whether or not I’m fooled by the rocks that she got, my jabs don’t really enter into her general J. Aura.


• Even if I don’t like her music, or her acting, or anything I’ve seen by her save “Out of Sight”, she’s obviously doing something right, and I like most mock her since we’re in little position to do anything but wish we had a modicum of the success and wealth she has.

Now, notice I don’t talk here about her personality. Know why? I don’t know it. Never met the girl. Never will, most likely. I’ll make fun of “Jenny from the Block” as “Worst Single Ever”, sure, but any personal attacks are made, and I hope this is generally obvious, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Jenny ain’t never done nuttin’ to me but make bad music, and that’s why I have multiple presets on my car stereo. I really don’t have to listen. Just as she really doesn’t have to read my blog.

Because the blog, to paraphrase Trey, is bullshit. It really is. The writing, however, isn’t.

Hey, I like the blog. Like it enough to make sure it’s updated every weekday. A lot of you like it enough to come daily, or weekly, or came here because you thought you’d see pictures of Heather Tom, in which case: Yo, sorry. I try, in general, to make sure that it’s worth visiting, when life lets me do so. But, in the end, even I know it’s a simple CSS code helping me to spew thoughts that I have the nerve to think are interesting enough to broadcast to the literal world to read.

The trick, then, is thus: to have an ego big enough to think my thoughts are readable while realizing that, in the end, the endeavor is not terribly important. It’s a tricky balance---taking the work seriously without taking the blog in and of itself as anything but .000000000000000001% of the Internet. And as such, it's just as OK to post my thoughts on pro wrestling, strip clubs, and Tim's dreamy pecs as it is to talk about headier issues. Cuz really, in the end, again with the whole "feces" theme---it really doesn't matter a terrible lot.

If I worried more about the blog, I probably wouldn’t write anything. I’d be taking audience polls in my head before I submitted each piece. I’d carefully craft each piece, writing and rewriting, imaging who might want to link it, and planning which blogs to comment on that day to ensure the proper demographic laid eyes upon the great gift of words that I had birthed that day for their consumption.

On occasion, I give you big words. But mostly I try to give you me. Or rather, most days I try to publish me. I’m not here to win grammar awards. (Whew, some say.) Not looking to hone the most finely-tuned paragraph. (No kidding, sayeth Foley.) Hell, often times I can’t be bothered with a coherent essay. (Don’t look at the first paragraph, I won’t if you won’t!)

Luckily, that’s not what most of you come to see, anyways. Hell, not exactly sure what it is you come to see. But I haven’t has too many copies of “Elements of Style” thrust my way in all the months of blogging, so I am going to assume I’m doing a modicum of the right thing.

For the time being, this is: I’ve worked nearly 40 hours in 3 days. I’ve had more emotional ups and downs in the past 9 weeks than in the last 2 years. I live essentially paycheck to paycheck. I have vacation time to spend but nowhere to go. But at this moment, I’m listening to a Phish live bootleg, sipping a Bass Ale, and life’s pretty damn fine, all things considered.

All the distractions, all the “problems”---all bullshit. This, this moment right now though….this is not. Being able to articulate it is not. And being able to share it is not.

Thanks for sticking with the site. I mean that truly. You’ve helped me in ways you’ll never know.

Posted by Ryan McGee at May 29, 2003 11:01 PM