What's Making Me Happy: Pop Culture Recommendations From A Lazy Weekend

Anxiety. There’s a lot of it going around at the moment. Not huge paralyzing anxiety, but just a constant low-level anxiety that you’re not taking in as much as you should be. Mass FOMO. We have to watch everything, listen to everything, share everything. It’s anxiety-inducing. What if I miss a trend? What if I don’t know what the latest meme is or what the photo comments on the LADBible mean? How can I live down the shame? Have you tried Meerkat? Do you have an opinion on Tidal? In the contemporary trend-heavy, algorithm-driven cultural landscape you’d be forgiven for going loco.

One way to make sense of the pop culture consumption environment is through recommendations. Some are algorithmic, some are organic (ie human). One of my favourite ways of getting the latter is through Pop Culture Happy Hour (an NPR podcast with a pretty self-explanatory name), that incorporates a great segment at the end of each show called What’s Making Us Happy. A kind of freestyle recommendation after the structured programme. So in the same spirit, and if you’re in need of some pop culture guidance, allow me to go into what made me happy this weekend. It’ll be a bit narrative, a slight departure from the kind of habitual copy pasting of a link on a social feed with the word “This.” appended, as if it is some form of universally applicable contextualization.

First off, some algorithmic recommendation from our friends at Netlfix. Normally, the platform’s recommendations are a bit off-base. I have no desire to watch Suits, yet the Netflix gods seem to think I should. I am still unsure why. However, this weekend, and in the wake of a The Killing binge over the last two weeks with my significant other, it pulled up the BBC miniseries Luther, which ran for 14 episodes between 2010 and 2013,  as something I should dig into. I finally clicked on it on Friday evening, and have been finding it hard to tear myself away from the screen to do anything else, like shower. It is a staggeringly brilliant show. Idriss Elba’s performance as the emotionally volatile sleuth is engrossing, and he’s got a presence unlike anything I’ve ever seen on the small screen (not since Stringer Bell anyway). The show lives in that kind of liminal Britain that exists in narratives such as Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror. Set five minutes in the future, but retro-feeling (without the kitsch), a dystopian wasteland, a reflection of a London glimmering and fast losing its bearings. The seasons are short and brisk, made up of hour-long chapters, like most blistering English television.

The second recommendation isn’t really a specific show, but rather a person, documentarian Louis Theroux. I’ve been aware of Louis Theroux for as long as I can remember, growing up as I did in the UK with his Weird Weekends on the BBC. But I’d never bothered to actually watch anything he’d done until now, my only connection having been a hasty reading of Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar, followed by some googling that led me to realize they were father-son and some internal ruminations on the state of nepotism in British culture. However, having watched some documentaries from various bits of his career, I can safely say he is a brilliant storyteller in his own right, and nepotism has nothing to do with his success. Very early on, with the aforementioned Weird Weekends in 1998, he crafted this on screen persona of a naive, deer-in-the-headlights shaggy reporter. As a viewer, you know he’s intelligent and educated, but his earnestness on camera is disarming, and he leaves all these pregnant pauses all over his interviews, that the subjects start to fill with their innermost thoughts. It’s an interview technique that’s been widely adopted since then. For example, without Theroux, there’d be no Vice Guide to the Balkans (although that is a highly banalised version of his genteel gonzo journalism).

On the literary front, I finally picked up a volume that’s been lying on a shelf in my line of sight for a month, entitled The Henry Miller Reader. You could say it’s an indirect recommendation from my father, since he just kind of left it laying around. Anyway, the volume was published in 1958 and pulls together some of Miller’s writing on his travels, some of his fiction and some profiles of acquaintances. Not that the distinction makes much sense, as the line between fact and fiction in the literary canon got very blurry thanks in great part to his efforts. My favourite piece (so far) is probably The Ghetto, an extract from his seminal Sexus, as it describes a part of New York City that I’m particularly infatuated with (the Lower East Side), and seems prophetic now in its warnings against over-gentrification.

But I guess the thing that made me the happiest this weekend wasn’t a matter of consumption at all, but rather a conspicuous lack of it. Thanks to my Jawbone UP I’ve been obsessed with hitting my daily walking targets for the past couple of years (I highly recommend this hilarious piece by David Sedaris in The New Yorker on his absurd relationship to his fitbit). So yesterday, after I was done reading some Miller over a bite to eat in Parmentier, I walked home along the banks of The Seine. For the first time in a long time, I decided to do this with nothing in my ears. No podcasts. No Spotify KCRW playlists. Nothing. Just the sound of the river lapping up against the cobblestones. No one was really walking along the banks in this area, save for a lone jogger every 15 minutes. Until I came across a guy playing his saxophone and I got to listen to that for a bit. As I kept walking, a Bateau Mouche went by. By now the sun was setting, and the boat had the purpose-built lights along its side blaring to show tourists the details of what was going on along the banks. A group of clearly inebriated teenagers waved at me. Free from distraction, in that moment, I decided to connect fully with the world around me. I stopped solidly, turned fully towards them and gave them the most enthusiastic wave I’ve ever given a seafaring vessel. And they lost their shit, started jumping up and down and suddenly the waving on their side expanded from a group of 10 guys to a hundred people on the windswept deck. Then they continued cutting through the water heading away from me, and the scene quietened down suddenly. Again, the water next to me and the faint rumble of cars in the distance were the only sounds. In a way I was alone again. But in many more ways, I’d never been less alone.

The Oscars Are Utterly Useless

The humourless and self-congratulatory circle-jerk that is the annual Academy Awards seems more anachronistic than ever. From the inane savaging of the sartorial choices of female actresses on the red carpet, to the tightly scripted opening show tunes, to the trite in-joking between mega-rich mega-powerful celebrities, to the absurd running time, to the whiteness of it all, it just seems to belong to another era.

In the age of video on demand, and streaming and Kickstarter-funded independent cinema and audience empowerment, we still get flicks like The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything, Weinstein-driven (or Weinsteinesque) dramatized biopics featuring lofty performances by competent Englishmen bent on taking home a trophy. Films genetically engineered to win statuettes, but devoid of all meaning and entertainment. It was refreshing to see the twee sensibility of Wes Anderson rewarded. Although I’m not a fan of that sensibility, I find it far more in tune with the current mood of audiences than, for example, a purposefully nothingsexual Alan Turing played by a Benedict Cumberbatch who has forgotten this isn’t season 4 of Sherlock.

Birdman - which I loved almost as much as it loved itself - took home the big trophies of the night. While I’m happy that Alejandro González Iñárritu, a Mexican director, is getting deserved recognition - and using that recognition to shine a light on the injustices of immigration laws in the US - the film is so precisely what Hollywood loves: Itself. A meditative reflection on its self-worth, which isn’t of much use to people outside of the navel-gazing scope of fellow creatives.

The Oscars do serve a financial purpose, naturally. The Oscar bump having provided the vile piece of shit that is American Sniper a 10,000% increase in ticket sales, and a more modest bump between 30 and 70% for the rest of the Best Picture nominees. Are awards important? Certainly. They help us make sense of the vast amount of production that is churned out on a yearly basis. They help do that most 2000something of things: curate. Is an award mainly dished out by the overwhelmingly white, male members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences important? I'd say that's a pretty solid 'Less than ever'. 

Of Dive Bar Friendships and Drug Busts

This was originally shared on Facebook, about a year ago. I've edited it slightly for grammar and syntax.

As we're standing outside Torino last night three guys approach us. Two of them are colossal with long blonde ponytails, and the third is shorter and stocky with an emo punk haircut and a broken nose. All three are wearing metal band tees. In what sounds like a nondescript but thick Scandinavian accent, they ask us what the club we're waiting in line for is called. We explain that we're not in line, we're just drinking on the sidewalk outside a dive bar. They say they're very confused and that they've been drinking a lot. To illustrate this one of them waves a bottle of Kassatly Chtaura liqueur in my face and cracks up. I ask him why on Earth anyone would drink liqueur. He pointed at a sticker that said -20% and shouted out "cheap!" as he lifted the bottle and tilted in, gesturing I should take a swig.

Knowing what Kassatly Chtaura liqueur tastes like I politely kept my mouth shut. We start talking, and laughing and as they buy us flowers, we find out that they're actually from Estonia. I ask them if they're traveling with a band or something (they look unmistakably like roadies), but they say that they're on a far more important mission. Intrigued, we ask what this mission is. "To drink in every country in the world!" they scream back in a cackle of laughter.

They've been to 100 countries so far. Correction. They've gotten thoroughly hammered in 100 countries so far. Marty explains that he broke his nose a few days ago falling down some steps while heavily inebriated in Petra. Then he takes out his phone and shouts "Want to see something cool? We got drunk in Kiev last week on Maidan." He starts sliding through the photos of his phone, standing on the scenes of the Kiev protests. Beer in hand. After a few photos we get to the ones he's really excited about. They raided former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich's opulent mansion, along with all the other protestors. And they sat in his jacuzzi. Naked. There is photographic evidence of this (which I can, very sadly, never unsee).

It was one of those encounters that had half the street in stitches. A happy piece of Beirut randomness, that was broken up half an hour later when the police came along and started confiscating rolled-up cigarettes from people outside the bar and opening them up to check for drugs. The cops were sitting in their car and sniffing away ridiculously at the destroyed roll-ups. There was a sense of indignation at the unnecessary rudeness with which they broke up a friendly gathering of people gearing up for a long Easter weekend. One guy approached the car and defiantly started rolling a cigarette in the cops face, saying he just wanted him to see it happening to avoid having to roll another one later. When asked for his ID, he refused and muttered something about the dysfunctional state of affairs in the country and was promptly - and literally - dragged away to the crumbling and decrepit station across the street.

No two encounters could more perfectly illustrate a typical day in Beirut. From laughter and worldliness to violence and hopelessness in an hour. And all of that on the pavement outside a bar on a Thursday night.

Outside Torino Express with some friends. (Photo by legendary Lebanese photographer Tony El Hage)

I Was There: Brian Williams & The Embellishment of Truth

This article originally appeared on Gate37 in February 2015. 

By now you’ve heard about NBC news anchor Brian Williams and his ‘misremembering’ of an incident during his time reporting in Iraq. The fabulation has earned him the dubious honor of near-immediate memeification, with photos of his face set against the words ‘I was there’ (or photoshopped riding shotgun next to 2PAC) showing up as comments on news stories all over the internet. Williams might be taking six months leave from his job, but his face, and now sullied reputation are all over the place.

Americans have always had a peculiar relationship with their television news anchors since the advent of the format. Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, and their square-jawed peers have been unofficial paternal figures for a huge nation pointed towards their screens in the evening to be consoled, informed or terrified. That’s why Brian Williams’ recent fall from grace has gotten so much attention.

Williams is known in equal for his journalism and for his seemingly unlimited capacity for self-ridicule on ‘30 Rock’ and various late night shows, including on the Daily Show. There is something comfortingly circular about his many appearances on Jon Stewart’s eviscerating show, which in many ways has replaced the mainstream news as a source of information about domestic US politics and foreign affairs. According to numbers on activist site Take Part, a mere “29 percent of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, and more than half of Americans say that news stories are often inaccurate”. You can blame Peter Arnett, Dan Rather, Lara Logan, and now Brian Williams for that. Entertainment Tonight – bastion of level-headed analysis – has even suggested Williams should take up the mantle at the Daily Show now that Stewart is stepping down.

Jumping ship to a comedy network notwithstanding, discussions around this latest debacle bring up some interesting questions. While facts should undoubtedly remain the ultimate cornerstone of news reporting, is a little creative license really such a heinous act? We operate in a daily environment where is facts and accurate portrayal of reality have become overrated when it comes to telling overarching narratives about the contemporary world. Demanding pure undistilled truth from our peers, as we all busy ourselves with the permanent editing and embellishment of our own lives and narratives through our own media channels seems a bit odd.

Decades ago, Ryszard Kapuściński, one of Poland’s most celebrated authors and arguably the world’s most acclaimed foreign correspondent, wrote dispatches from dozens of the world’s conflict zones. He witnessed revolutions and coups in Africa and Latin America. He told his country, and later the world, about some of the events that define humanity as we experience it today. John Updike worshipped him. Gabriel García Márquez called him “the true master of journalism.” But, as a Slate piece that ran the week of his death in 2007 clearly states, “there’s one fact about the celebrated war correspondent and idol of New York’s literary class that didn’t get any serious attention this week. It’s widely conceded that Kapuściński routinely made up things in his books. The New York Times obituary, which calls Kapuściński a “globe-trotting journalist,” negotiates its way around the master’s unique relationship with the truth diplomatically, stating that his work was “often tinged with magical realism” and used “allegory and metaphors to convey what was happening.””

Do Kapuściński’s fabulations make him less of a truth-teller? I don’t think so. The creativity of his non-fiction told a greater over-arching narrative that goes beyond the cataloguing of facts. He told a Story. In 2015, between the constant news cycle on television, the increasingly prompt outrage cycle online, Fox News, our friends’ social media feeds and ISIS, we live in an age of excruciatingly permanent media, political and personal propaganda. If a lie tells a story that needs to be told, and that reveals a larger truth, so be it. That might not be what Brian Williams was doing – his ambitions might have been more vain – but that shouldn’t stop others from embellishing if they’re telling a wider truth.

The Misguided Lebanese Debate over Mia Khalifa and Porn

The Lebanese proclivity towards double standards and instant moral indignation is staggering. Case in point: the absolute shitstorm caused by the sudden awareness that a woman of Lebanese origins enjoys sex and has chosen to make a profession of acting in pornographic films.

The moral indignation about Mia Khalifa, presumably the first Lebanese pornstar, is wrong for two reasons. First and foremost, as a woman, she is free to do as she pleases with her body. Secondly, as a sentient human being with agency, who lives halfway across the world, she is in charge of her own life and owes absolutely nothing to the country where she happened to be born. There is this odd perception that being Lebanese is a vocation and a duty first and that your personal life comes second.

The lack of appreciation of her success is odd given that the Lebanese are famous for latching onto the successes of anyone who has ever come close to a Cedar tree. We claim fourth generation Mexicans as our own just because they’re successful. Why aren’t we proud of this woman skyrocketing to the top of her chosen profession. Why are we proud of Carlos Ghosn or Shakira? Is sex really that terrifying? Lebanese pop culture is one of the most highly pornographic I have ever come across. While there might not be any actual nudity or penetration, every hyper-suggestive pop video, every glistening TV host, every drama filmed in a producer’s porn-set-like home: the aesthetic is pure porn. We’re just comfortable with it as long as the sex is left out of it. As for the double standards, if the top male pornstar on Pornhub was Lebanese and had the world’s most prolific dick, everyone would be sharing stories about it with pride.

For the record, I don’t think we should be particularly proud of Mia Khalifa, we should just be indifferent. She’s doing a job she chose, in a regulated industry, no different to banking. Actually, it’s probably more regulated than banking. I certainly don’t think she’s our last frontier against ISIS as some have suggested. She is a 21-year old in Florida who has made a decision for herself, with absolutely no wider implications.

However, the conversation we should be having is one about the increasing place of porn in mainstream sex lives. There have been a barrage of think pieces on the issue, TED talks, and even a spate of films, such as Don Jon and Shame, about sex and porn addiction. When I was in school in the 90s in London, we had a porn dealer, who’d steal tattered copies of Hustler from his dad’s collection and flog them for 50p on the playground. Today increasingly younger boys and girls are growing up with increasingly hardcore representations of what sex can be. That’s what we should be focussing on, not one actress who is absolutely not the problem in the hyper-masculine environment she operates in.

If you want to steer your indignation at something, look at the increasingly omni-present porn industry. Pornhub is one of the most visited sites on the internet, well ahead of the BBC and CNN. One of the biggest porn production houses on earth, Brazzers, is co-founded by a Lebanese guy living in Montreal, who went to Concordia, a university every Lebanese mom is proud to boast her son went to. Why aren’t you angry at him?

The Best of 2014

Best Films
Locke. 
Nightcrawler. 
What We Do In The Shadows. 
Guardians of the Galaxy. 
Leviathan. 

Best TV
Fargo. 
Orange is the New Black. 
True Detective. 
Last Week Tonight with Jon Oliver. 
Orphan Black. 

Best Music 
St Vincent , "St Vincent" 
The War On Drugs, 'Lost In The Dream'
fka twigs, "LP1"
Jack White, "Lazaretto"
Alt-J, 'This Is All Yours'

Best Books 
Little Failure: A Memoir, Gary Shteyngart
10:04, Ben Lerner 
I’ll Be Right There, Kyung-Sook Shin
Faces in the Crowd, Valeria Luiselli
A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James