Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
No bio...
User ID: 732
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
7d ago
Biles didn’t just drop out because of “anxiety”. She was, allegedly, experiencing something gymnasts call “the twisties”, wherein she was literally losing her sense of spatial orientation during aerial twisting events. When an NBA player of Jordan’s caliber has a bad day, it means scoring 15 points instead of 40. When an Olympic gymnast has a bad day, it can mean landing the wrong way and ending up with a career-altering injury. Like, I get why people shit on Biles at the time, especially because the morons in the feminized sports media decided to use it as an opportunity to celebrate her bravery rather than just recognizing it as a somewhat unfortunate and embarrassing setback in what has otherwise been an incredible, historic career. Still, if we’re talking about greatest athletes, very few have had the sustained level of dominance in a particular sport that Biles has.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
7d ago
Michael Jordan dropped out of the NBA for two entire seasons to putter around playing minor league baseball - and many have speculated that he did so as a result of his considerable gambling addiction - abandoning his teammates and likely costing them at least one championship. Do you believe this should disqualify him from discussion as the NBA’s GOAT? I think Simone Biles is certainly on Jordan’s level for her respective sport, and her dropping out of those Olympics doesn’t seem to have impacted her teammates to quite the extent that Jordan’s dropping out did, since the U.S. still won 6 gymnastics medals at those Olympics.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
8d ago
I find it bizarre that you consider basketball players to be unimpressive athletes because their sport requires a specific set of physical attributes (height, long limbs) while celebrating Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, whose extreme and atypical genetically-determined physical attributes (both men look as though they were designed in a lab to excel at their respective sports) were absolutely vital to their success.
Why is LeBron James’ incredible success at basketball invalid because he couldn’t have achieved the same feat if his height had maxed out at 5’7”, but Usain Bolt is an incredible athlete even though he couldn’t have achieved what he did if his leg length had maxed out two inches shorter? At the top level of most sports, no amount of obsessive work ethic is enough to put one over the top without prodigious God-given physical traits. Sprinting is one of the most genetically-based sports - far more than basketball, where a great many of the all-time greats are on the lower end of the league’s height distribution. There is no sprinting equivalent of a Steve Nash, a player with limited physical tools who excelled due to hard work, intelligence, and savvy.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9d ago
I was like look, MLK got civil rights done at the end of the day, not the Black Panthers. He still sort of thinks that whites needed to be 'scared' into it, but I strongly disagree. It was getting moderate whites on board by emphasizing our shared humanity and showing a human face to the suffering. Things like Selma, you know? Hard to ignore.
Yeah sorry, whatever your brother said about how the “Civil Rights” movement won its political gains is almost guaranteed to be more historically accurate than the extremely sanitized, simplified, mythologized version you’ve presented here. If this is the narrative you need to believe in to allow yourself to decry political violence and seek conciliation, then by all means please continue to believe in it. But it doesn’t actually bear much resemblance to the nitty-gritty details of how that particular sausage got made at the time.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9d ago
I hear both pronunciations equally often.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9d ago
I don’t think that’s true. I hear people make prison rape “don’t drop the soap” jokes all the time. Men raping women is something it’s taboo to joke about. A man (or, in this case, a male deity) raping another man - especially when the context is this over-the-top and obviously tongue-in-cheek - is far, far less taboo to joke about, especially to this particular audience.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9d ago
More than anything, I hope that this episode sparks a return of a seemingly long-lost role in society: the apolitical entertainer who just wants to make people feel good, and who is loath to alienate any significant portion of their potential audience. A return to the old “Republicans buy sneakers too” approach coined by Michael Jordan.
There has been much speculation about why such a role has disappeared - why even formerly apolitical entertainers have seemingly felt compelled to start making extremely divisive political statements.
One explanation is that such individuals have always actually been very politically opinionated individuals, and that being permitted to be open about that has been a sort of liberation. An embrace of authenticity which allows them to cultivate a more intimate, real relationship with their fans. “Now you see who I really am and what I really believe. Can you still support me, even knowing that? If you can, you’re a real fan. If not, then you were only a fan of the character I was playing.” With the rise of social media and the subsequent shift to a more parasocial model of celebrity, this makes sense. And as someone who once thought about pursuing a career as a public entertainer, one of the big things that dissuaded me was thinking about how careful I would have to commit to being with my public statements and behavior for the rest of my life, for fear of alienating people or damaging my PR. I can see why for someone like Kyle Gass, just being able to let loose and say what’s on his mind, and to expect to be in a cocoon of people who would embrace it and not take it super seriously, must be a very psychologically-important thing.
The other explanation for why there are so few apolitical celebrities is that entertainers are being compelled, either by explicit top-down coercion or by simply overwhelming social pressure, to assume vocal stances about issues. One could argue that this is the case for Taylor Swift, who received relentless criticism from certain circles during the earlier stages of her career for “not using her platform to advocate for important issues.” The most egregious example of this, to me, is the example of novelty pop-rock/ska band The Aquabats. They’re about as squeaky-clean, apolitical, and family-friendly as can be; they dress in silly superhero costumes, sing songs about things like pizza day at the school cafeteria and how worms make dirt, and in fact the frontman created a popular children’s TV show. Nobody is going to these guys for serious commentary about anything! Yet, after having crowd-funded an album set to be released in 2020, they scrapped the release of the album and started sharing various links to BLM- and CRT-related “resources” and encouraging their fans to direct their money and attention to those causes instead. Did they do so because they’ve been undercover progressives the whole time and felt morally obligated to speak up? Or did they do so because they were afraid of the optics and potential backlash of raising money for a goofy ska album when black people are literally being murdered and they need your money to save their lives? (Or is it some combination of both?)
The way in which public figures whom I once cherished have beclowned themselves and alienated me and other fans with right-wing sensibilities over the last decade has been so incredibly demoralizing to me, and I’m just praying that this Tenacious D thing might finally slow the momentum at least a tiny bit. I’ve started insulating myself from the risk of being exposed to awful political takes from my favorite celebrities by just assuming they’re all libtards and assiduously avoiding reading any of their public statements, looking at their social media, etc. If this situation at least encourages entertainers to keep their political commentary sequestered in places where someone like me can avoid seeing it if we want to, maybe that will be enough of a stable Schelling point to help the culture heal a bit.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9d ago
Yeah, as someone who commutes via public transit and who walks a lot, the lack of publicly-available toilets is a massive hindrance to my life, and is nearly entirely a result of the fact that homeless people cannot be trusted not to make those bathrooms filthy, or not to use them to shoot up drugs or clean themselves. When I visited Japan, I was blown away by the number of publicly-available toilets - surely a sign of the high trust level of the society. (As well as the generally small number of homeless people in that country.)
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9d ago
but doesn't have the gravitas to carry a project on his own the same way Jim Carrey did in days of old
I agree that he’s not a Jim Carrey level comedy star, but he clearly carried films such as School Of Rock and Nacho Libre, as well as the supremely underrated black comedy docudrama Bernie. (And if he’d stayed relatively thin, he could have had more everyman-style leading roles like Shallow Hal.)
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9d ago
His biggest stuff is voice acting in kids' movies (lead villain in a $1B+ movie last year) so he doesn't have as much face recognition as most of his peers, though.
I don’t think that’s accurate. I would say he’s every bit as well-known for films like School Of Rock, Nacho Libre, The Holiday, Saving Silverman, and Peter Jackson’s King Kong as he is for his family-film voice acting, even if the latter has certainly made him the most money.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
9d ago
"I can't wait to take Kage back to Hell
I'm gonna fill him with my hot demon gel"
Their second most popular song jokes about a protagonist potentially being raped for eternity by Satan.
This isn’t a “dark joke” in the mold of Jimmy Carr or Anthony Jeselnik, because approximately zero of Tenacious D’s listeners actually believe in Satan or hell, and therefore this joke isn’t rubbing up against any of their actual moral sensibilities. Yeah, it’s puerile, homoerotic, and makes light of Satan, so it would certainly be a “dark joke” if said by, for example, a Catholic priest in the course of a church service, but in the context of a Tenacious D song it’s a very “light joke”.
What made the Trump joke different is that political humor, especially of the violent nature, is absolutely not part of their act (even if, as others have pointed out, the members have made political comments outside of their capacity as Tenacious D) and therefore it actually is shocking to the political sensibilities of some listeners.
Alright, I tried not to overthink it. Whittling down a list of 100 down to 50 was an interesting challenge, and there’s a lot more I’d like to include, but I think this is a good representation. It’s weighted toward the 80’s, with a good smattering of 70’s and a bit from the 60’s. I started with a few mega-hits but tried to stay away from songs that I’m sure you’ve already heard a million times, although I’m sure there’s a few on here you’re already very familiar with. Many of these are, of course, very well-known bands, and in those cases I tried to use somewhat lesser-known songs rather than the ones everyone already hears all the time. A few - for example, ABBA and Def Leppard, two of my all-time favorite bands - were very difficult because I would have loved to include a number of their songs, but decided to stick with just one each.
”Kiss” - Prince
“And She Was” - Talking Heads
“Fat Bottomed Girls” - Queen
“Peace Of Mind” - Boston
“What You Need” - INXS
“Don’t Bring Me Down” - Electric Light Orchestra
“Open Your Heart” - Madonna
“Youth Gone Wild” - Skid Row
“Soul Man” - The Blues Brothers
“Saturday Night’s (Alright For Fighting)” - Elton John
“Vacation” - The Go-Go’s
“Surrender” - Cheap Trick
“Roam” - The B-52’s
“Jungle Love” - Steve Miller Band
“This Charming Man” - The Smiths
“Dreams” - The Cranberries
“Wasted Years” - Iron Maiden
“Rio” - Duran Duran
“Waterloo” - ABBA
“Friday I’m In Love” - The Cure
“Do You Believe In Love” - Huey Lewis & The News
“Bad Reputation” - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
“Oliver’s Army” - Elvis Costello & The Attractions
“War Pigs” - Black Sabbath
“Higher Love - Single Version” - Steve Winwood
“Emotions” - Mariah Carey
“Fox On The Run” - Sweet
“Freeze-Frame” - The J. Geils Band
“Land Of 1000 Dances” - Wilson Pickett
“Dance Hall Days” - Wang Chung
“Everybody Wants You” - Billy Squier
“Down On The Corner” - Creedence Clearwater Revival
“Hysteria” - Def Leppard
“Lido Shuffle” - Boz Scaggs
“Would I Lie To You - ET Mix” - Eurythmics
“Kiss Me Deadly” - Lita Ford
“Paradise By The Dashboard Light” - Meat Loaf
“You Can Call Me Al” - Paul Simon
“China Grove” - The Doobie Brothers
“Breaking The Law” - Judas Priest
“Tell It To My Heart” - Taylor Dayne
“We Belong” - Pat Benatar
“Nightrain” - Guns N’ Roses
“I Was Made For Dancin’” - Leif Garrett
“Stand” - R.E.M.
“Take It Easy” - Eagles
“Young Hearts” - Commuter
“Cold As Ice” - Foreigner
“Dreaming” - Blondie
“Don’t Worry Baby” - The Beach Boys
Maybe I’ve underestimated your knowledge of this era, and this list will all be stuff you know well. (Or, conversely, perhaps I’m assuming too much, and should have just gone with a list of 50 mega-hits. Who knows?)
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
10d ago
Or… you can just ignore the JQ posts you don’t like. There’s a little minus sign icon next to the post that you can click to hide it, so you never have to see it again. Isn’t that the best solution of all? Then the mods don’t have to filter by content, and people who hate the JQ posting can proactively avoid having to engage with it.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
10d ago
But I didn’t ask you!!!
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
10d ago
Twenty songs? That’s barely a warm-up! We’re trying to bring this man up to speed on four decades of music! We need to let this thing breathe.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
10d ago
How big a playlist do you want? As I told the last person here for whom I made a playlist, my autistic fixation will quickly overtake me if I’m not given a limit.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
10d ago
There are historical figures and movements that understood this, and centrists love to sneer at them. Going so far as to cast the doom of the western people in a salvageable light rather than admit they're wrong.
You’re being coy here, but in other comments you’ve been more explicit that you think we should look to the National Socialists for a model. Now, I’m happy to point out the things the Third Reich got right, and their interest in eugenics is probably the best argument for not totally discarding their legacy.
That being said, the legitimacy of their eugenic project is severely compromised by the fact that arguably the central thrust of it was rounding up massive numbers of Jews - a very high-quality population with a proven track record of great achievements, both in Germany and beyond - and causing their deaths via either negligence or outright murder, depending on which sources you believe.
This is compounded by the fact that they clearly expressed a desire to take military actions which they readily expected to lead to the deaths of some substantial number of white Slavs, another population who, while at that time not quite on par with the Germanic peoples due to a bunch of factors we can debate, were clearly at worst a near-peer brother civilization to the rest of Europe. Even casting the Reich’s foreign policy in the best light by presenting it as a noble war against Bolshevism, you’re still left questioning just how much destruction they were willing to visit upon the populations of Eastern Europe in order to achieve such an aim.
All of this to say, you might want to attempt a bit more empathy regarding the specific reasons why intelligent people who share your basic goals and values might still think that the fascists were and are a terrible and counterproductive model for the achievements of those goals and the furtherance of those values. One can believe that eugenics is a fundamentally good and important project while being reasonably squeamish about the specific actions historically taken in the interest of that project, as well as reasonably suspicious of some of the ulterior motives held by the most visible and historically-impactful proponents of the project.
Most places on earth have people with many great qualities. East Asia, maybe, in particular. However, I don't want to live in China, Korea or Japan. I want to live where I live now and I want my future descendants to be afforded the same luxury. I am very much not in favor of introducing the sort of status and award obsessed 'Asian' into my immediate environment. It leads to the same toxic study and work culture on display in those countries and I very much prefer mine over theirs.
What about a synthesis of both cultures, which incorporates the best aspects of both and seeks to sand off the worst and most obsolete aspects of each culture? I would argue that modern Japan and Korea are already a sort of prototype version of this: Western military occupation and cultural-political influence has, since the 1940s and 50s, already been moving those countries in a more Westernized direction; however, they’ve married those Western influences to the core Eastern aspects of their society, producing something that is in a great many ways superior to both extremes. It really is a best-of-both-worlds situation. Now, I agree that this process is incomplete, and that some parts of those cultures still need ironing out; I agree that the work/study culture is too extreme. That being said, there are many ways I would like to see Western cultures become more like Asian ones.
I think that a long-term melding of West and East is unequivocally the best outcome for not only both cultural spheres, but for humanity as a whole. Perhaps influenced overmuch by the black-and-white thinking of the National Socialists, you seem to be trapped in an either/or framing, in which one culture’s norms must be jealously guarded against influence by another. I think that’s the wrong approach. The ubermensch in my mind is a hapa race of diligent, creative, orderly but passionate, aristocratic in spirit without allowing status obsession to crowd out virtue, maintaining the capacity for violence while still holding it at arm’s length. For that to happen, some Asians are going to have to show up in Western societies and be able to do their thing; ditto for whites in Asian societies. Unlike you, I do not perceive this as an invasion by those who will wreck something precious about my society. (Note that I have said unabashedly that there are many groups whom I perceive as dangerous invaders; I just don’t see East Asians as one of them.)
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
10d ago
So, you have some of my absolute favorite bands on here (especially happy to see The Band CAMINO get a shout-out) but I find it very strange that you enjoy those bands but can’t find anything to like about the bands and genres that directly influenced them. Like, a number of these bands are clearly very inspired by 80’s New Wave and arena rock, as well as 70’s disco and power pop. Like, if you’re into slick production, multilayered instrumentation, and bubblegum melodies, I think it’s very odd not to have any interest in, say, Def Leppard, ABBA, Prince, and Cheap Trick. Even if you think that music has moved in a direction of pure improvement, taking the raw clay of Boomer Music and fashioning into the Actually Good Music of today, surely you can see that there’s at least some music from 1990 and earlier which still holds up?
If you want me to give you a list of some older music that has all of the same important qualities as the music you’ve listed here, I’d be happy to provide it.
(Also, I want to shill my favorite band Marianas Trench here, as it seems you’d love their music based on the genres you’re into.)
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
11d ago
Presumably the “so far” is implicit and they expect their readers to understand that this will not be the last such list that will be published by the paper over the course of this century.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
11d ago
Nowhere in this post did you actually provide an argument about why any of their choices are bad. You just kind of pointed and sputtered at the fact that anyone could have this particular opinion. In what specific ways would your list look different? Why would I “hate myself” for reading the books included on their list?
Entirely plausible! All I’m saying is that until I see some real reporting corroborated by multiple sources, I’m going to avoid accepting any claims at face value.
EDIT: I’m now seeing multiple outlets reporting that the FBI themselves have named Crooks, so I now assume that identification is correct.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
12d ago
Seems that Crooks may have been prematurely fingered.
There’s some DR Twitter speculation that the real culprit is Pittsburgh-based antifa street brawler Maxwell Yearick, who certainly does uncannily resemble the supposed photos of the shooter, but I’m gonna wait and see how things shake out before endorsing any of this speculation.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
12d ago
Your statement isn’t true, though! Are you suggesting that John Wilkes Booth was a left-winger? If not, then your attempt to insinuate that all of the presidential assassins were left-wingers plainly fails. (And again, it fails doubly because Charles Guiteau had few if any identifiably “left-wing” beliefs.)
Or, if you want to instead claim, as you originally did, that all of the presidential assassins have been members of the Democratic Party, you are then stuck explaining why Leon Czolgosz had literally zero affiliation with the party and does not seem to have ever voted for them, as well as why Guiteau was not only a registered Republican but also an active campaigner for the Republican presidential candidate, who hoped to receive an appointed position in a Republican administration.
Overall, your post was a disjointed mess full of easily-refutable claims, and your attempts to rescue it have contained even more lies and dodging. There is no identifiable ideological or partisan pattern when it comes to the men who have successfully carried out executions of American presidents, and your attempt to conjure one out of thin air abjectly failed.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
13d ago
In no sense does this address any of the criticisms I’ve leveled against your post. Nobody has argued that Leon Czolgosz, anarcho-communist, was not left-wing. The problem is that, again, your original post called him a “Democrat”. That’s what you said. Not whatever you’re now pretending you said instead.
To the extent that this is true - and I’m not sure that it is - it would be because Hillary Clinton was seen as a very serious and dangerous person, with the power and know-how required to do very serious harm to her enemies. Kamala, meanwhile, is widely seen as a joke. Someone with no real skills, or base of support, or chance at achieving any real power.
Now that she has been thrust into a position where she might actually pose a real threat, expect to see the knives come out immediately as people grapple with what four+ years of a President Kamala Harris would mean for this country, both domestically and internationally. For my part, I have made my strong loathing of Harris abundantly clear and have spoken about it numerous times here, so you can’t say I’m not doing my part.
More options
Context Copy link