YouTube Obsession

Not necessarily an obsession but I want to talk about this video:

The video does a good job of laying out how men idealize the perfect body more than women do. It also ends on the note that sweeping generalizations of men and women is pointless. No matter what you look like, someone wants to jump your bones. “Beauty” is a false societal standard that only exists to better serve capital.

What always bothers me about these discussions is that no one talks about the blurring of lines between “attractive male” and “queer.” Hear me out, in the video, one of the most attractive men was one that wore a pink barrette in his hair, painted his nails and wore a Barbie sweater. This isn’t just in this video, it’s everywhere, straight men coopt queer signifiers that would have gotten me beat up in high school to be more attractive to women. Hasan or Timothee Chalamet, can paint their nails, wear pearl necklaces and blouses and still be considered attractive to the female gaze because there are still fundamentally straight.

However, if it were to come out Hasan or Timmy had ever been fucked by another man, conservatively, they would lose 75% of their female fan base. It’s a common refrain that though women love queer men, or queer signifying men, cis-straight women are uncomfortable with act of queerness. As a queer man who enjoys all spectrums of gender; While on the apps, I found that I received more attention from cis-women when my profile did not overtly state that I was queer. God forbid they bump Birkins with a fellow bottom.

I want it to be clear that I don’t blame straight women or men for this homophobia. Media has made always been derogatory toward sexual queerness. Depicting queers, as promiscuous, uncommitted and unfaithful, but also, most importantly, disease ridden. So for those stigmas to sink into the greater culture as a whole is unsurprising.

Reading/Playing

It’s no secret that I love reading Battletech core rule books and never actually playing them. Behold, the latest focus of my Battletech procrastination: MegaMek.

MegaMek is a suite of fan-made applications that allow the game of Battletech to played online with friends or solo. Entirely fan-made.

You can fight individual battles via the core MegaMek or you can dive into infinitely customizable and self-generating campaign with MekHQ. This allows you to live out the fantasy of running your own Battlemech mercenary group, for decades fighting throughout the galaxy. Everything is simulated, you mercs will can even get married, have kids and retire. Did I mention this is all fan-made?

It also comes with a program to design your own Battlemaps and Mech builds that can be printed and used in IRL games.

The depth is is deep y’all. So deep that I have been reading the Campaign Operations book to familiarize myself with all the options available in MekHQ. This lead me to try and design my perfect Lance (Battlemech team) and discovering GrimMechs, a online database (fan compiled of course) of mech builds. Sure there are tons of mech build sites online but none look like Grims.

I literally become Adam Sandler from Uncut Gems when I see this: “I’m gonna cum.” My brain instantly begins to think of all the random dice rolls that come from shooting 10 small lasers at once while running in a XL clan engine like a goddamn mad man.

Ugh, I have spent hours just looking up builds for mechs that I like and just imagining all the cool shit that could go down.

Listening

Warning! Incoming obligatory Gorillaz appreciation post.

It’s been repeated often in this blog that I grew up in the country, COUNTRY, but it informs so much of my life. And a big part of that is that my exposure to music was relegated to my parents LP collection¹ , local country radio stations and pop radio out of Louisville KY.

So you have to imagine that kind of music environment when Clint Eastwood hit the airwaves and blew my mind. It was so weird and foreign to me² , hip-hop and rock with strange sampling, I was hooked. After getting the entire album I was fully bought into the weirdness of Gorillaz “sound.”

The slow build up into a “Song 2” grunge slam will always get me pumped.

Just a funky song with self-referential lyrics. Still a party staple.

Needless to say I was primed and pumped for their second album. It couldn’t have come out at a better time; I was just graduating high school and the first big house party we had as graduates I was able to bust out this all time booty dropper…

It still fucking slaps! It’s also -at least according to youtube music numbers- the 3rd most played Gorillaz song. It’s easy to see why, there wasn’t really anything sounding like this at the time in my musical spheres.

This felt like the first album I obsessed over “as an adult.”

I can’t say I followed them much after this though. My music world became much bigger after moving out of my hometown and discovered dorm-wide music sharing via iTunes hacking software. I had access to more music than I had ever had before and Gorillaz never broke through that for me again. Though the chill-groove of Plastic Beach really grew on me after a recent re-listen.

Other Notables

** The democratic party grandstanding and getting loud during a hearing that wasn’t under oath or meaningful in any way? Nice.

** Real Man On Wire vibes. 

**

1  Mostly Doobie Brothers, Al Green and ELO.

2  Funnily enough I had been listening to Blur before this due to my friend’s older sister.