Insignificant and occasionally interesting contributions to the cognition of reality…

Illustration by Andreas Hykade. Courtesy of Chris Robinson.

I’ve been visiting that Website kazaa.com a lot. In a matter of weeks, I was able to catch up with The Sopranos (it sometimes takes a year for me to see recent shows), watch three seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, discover Six Feet Under, and watch loads of lesbian and gay porn. Meantime, I was also watching the show Oz; mostly because they were the same joes who made Homicide: Life on the Street, one of my favourite shows of all time.

Now okay…Curb is pretty funny, but still quite self-indulgent, juvenile and ultimately meaningless. And hey…that’s okay…(as I said in December) meaningless ain't such a bad thing. What I like about Homicide, and to a lesser degree Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Oz, is that they attempt to deal with mature, sensitive MEANINGFUL questions, but not in a big over the top way. They are often quite funny…and I don’t mean funny in a snot ass intellectual way…but in a real gut busting snorting kinda way (e.g. the Paulie character in Sopranos).

Where Is It?
Funny thing is that outside of Waking Life and maybe some Japanese stuff (I don’t know nuttin’ about Japanese animation aside from indie stuff) there are no (North American) animation shows that combine this maturity and humour with the exception of maybe Samurai Jack (even though it’s little more than a cliff’s notes to Kurosawa). We’ve heard all this talk about animation growing up, how there are more adult animations being produced, and okay, yes…there was Pond Life, Bob and Margaret, Dilbert, Family Guy, King of the Hill and, of course, The Simpsons, but all of them fall back on laughs. There might be some nods to political, social or cultural issues, but it’s rarely more than a passing, “Hey, look how smart I is!” gesture.

Now hold up…I’m not asking for heavy handed Ingmar Bergman chamber dramas directed by the Quays, Simon Pummell, Piotr Dumala or Alexander Petrov. FUCK THAT. I have almost no capacity left for humourless films that explore the horror, horror, horror of life with absolutely no sense of humour. That’s just self-indulgence. If you ain't gonna share your toys, then you can kiss my ass.

No, what I’m looking for is something that has personality, humour and yet is mature and reflective. Waking Life was a great example. Yeah…okay…I hear those “philosophy 101” critiques. So what? What the hell’s so bad about trying to articulate your views of life? Besides…it was funny and even comforting to hear all these theories and perspectives. Most of us (me too) plow through life without really thinking about every action. You can’t possibly reflect all the time because you’d never get a damn thing done. But it seems to me that it is necessary (even if life is ultimately meaningless) to have those reflective moments where you analyse your life and how to live it. That’s how we evolve and learn not to repeat past ignorance(s). We often slip into routines and habits and just as often we need to be smacked with a left hook or uppercut to shake us from complacency.