She re-tweeted this recently. She tweeted this same fucking commercial within the last six months. We get it. You remember this commercial. Good for you.
Is she just seeking this stuff out? She’s looking for the same commercial over and over and over again?
Then you scan through her other recent tweets. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Castlevania, Disney shit, Weezer, I have to imagine that Britney Spears is somewhere.
It’s the same handful of shit every fucking time. Can you come up with some new *nostalgia*? Let’s hear about a DIFFERENT local commercial that you enjoyed.
I’m not saying that I don’t repeat stuff. I’m not saying that I didn’t tell the story about my friend breaking Quest for Glory II half a dozen times on this blog. But I try to keep it fresh.
Obviously, there’s a limit to how much stuff you can talk about from childhood. Especially when you haven’t done much, as I haven’t, and as Erin hasn’t. But if you really search your memory banks, I’m sure that you can come up with something new.
Here’s a new one from me. In about the fifth grade, a kid of Middle Eastern descent moved to our town and went to our school. He was pretty dumb. Didn’t do well in school. Actually, I don’t know if he was dumb but he didn’t do well in school. This was the only Middle Eastern person I’ve ever seen in that town, before or since.
His mother was a lawyer. I don’t know where his dad was. But the fact that his mother was a lawyer suggests to me that he wasn’t stupid. And he didn’t seem stupid. I talked to him. He was a pleasant guy. But his mother seemed to be…absent. I suspect that neglect was the reason for his poor performance in school.
She came in to do a talk one day. She was a really arrogant woman, talking about how she never lost a case and whatnot. Enjoyed listening to the sound of her own voice. And she didn’t have a headscarf or anything like that. And she seemed to be an American. So I don’t know where these people came from. They were definitely of Middle Eastern descent and they all had Middle Eastern names, first and last names. So that suggests recent immigrants but…I think that they were both born in the US. I don’t know. Maybe the mother wasn’t but she sounded American to me. Could just be that she’s lived in the US for a considerable amount of time. But then she became a lawyer? I don’t know.
Anyway, this guy hung out with the dummies and the dummies tended to be bullies. And they would even bully him on a semi-regular basis. But that was the group that he was in. Probably a racial element to this too. Almost everyone in my school was white.
He claimed that his cousin would give him steroids. So this became the source of much merriment for the remaining three years of grade school. He was given the imaginative nickname of “Steroids”.
Was his cousin actually giving him steroids? I don’t know. Maybe? It seemed like a troubled family. But he mentioned this steroids thing as a way to try to intimate people and it absolutely did not have the desired effect.
We were also in the 8th grade school play together. Everybody was required to be in the play. We were both winged monkeys. He rarely came to rehearsals so the teacher eventually told him not to come any more. It was just another example of his neglect from his mother. Somebody asked why he was cut from the play and the teacher said, “Because he didn’t do jack.” That kind of almost-profanity was scandalous to our ears. Also, it was a woman so particularly unusual.
But I wish somebody would have told me that that was an option. Because as far as I was aware, we were all required to be in this embarassing play. I didn’t want to fucking do this. But whatever.
I remember another school play, this must have been in the second or third grade, where we had to sing Beatles songs. “She Loves You” and whatnot. Totally inappropriate songs for our age, but the music teacher (some hippie lady) obviously liked the Beatles and this is how it work. Whatever “popular” music you’re playing in band, for example, is the music that your band teacher enjoyed as a teenager. So fucking Beach Boys and shit, in my case.
So anyway, NOBODY wanted to sing this shit. The guys, anyway. So our normal teacher came in to speak to us. Actually, now that I think of it, this must have been the fourth grade. She came in and said, “I know that you’re embarassed to sing and you’re afraid that you’re going to look foolish, but if you don’t sing, you’re going to look even more foolish.”
I suppose that it’s true. But here’s a third option: how about I just don’t show up? Because I don’t want to fucking be here singing love songs from the 1960s to an auditorium of bored parents. Why is this compulsory?
Why should ritual humiliation be a required part of education? If somebody came to me as an adult and said, “We’d like you to get on stage and sing 1960s love songs to bored parents” I’d tell them to fuck off. There’s absolutely no chance that I’m doing that. But because you’re a student, you have to do it. Why? You don’t have rights as a student?
And we were doing all of that for free. Who works for free? “We want you to appear in this play, put hundreds of hours into rehearsals, and do it all for no remuneration.” Umm…no, I’m not doing that. Get the fuck out of here.
The day of the play arrives. It’s like a duet. The girls excitedly sing “She loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah”. Or maybe they changed it to “He” to make it not gay, I don’t remember. Then the boys really, really, REALLY reluctantly sing, “She loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah.” And the audience of bored parents all laugh.
This was all a setup. We were set up to fail. Anyone with a brain knows that fourth grade boys do not want to sing 1960s love songs TO THEIR PARENTS. It’s emasculating bullshit.
The music teacher knew it. Our normal teacher knew it. The principal must have known it. These songs were wholly inappropriate and humiliating. What was gained from any of that? Did we have a better appreciation for music or theatre? No. To the contrary. Music and theatre are things to be avoided at all costs. They’re painful and humiliating.
Anyway, fast-forward to the summer after 8th grade. I’m going to summer school with this Middle Eastern guy. Summer school for high school. Before high school officially began. That whole steroids stuff is forgotten. It’s a new school. New beginning. Nobody knows about that steroids shit.
He lived near to me so we’d walk home from the bus together. I went to his house once. There were a couple of small dogs in cages. It was pretty depressing.
He tells me that his cousin can get me a pot plant. I tell him that I’m alright for pot plants.
So I’m talking to another guy who I went to grade school with and is also going to this summer school. I tell him about this pot plant discussion and we all have a good laugh about it. Then the guy says, “Tell him that I want a pot plant.” So I said okay.
Next day, I’m talking to this Middle Eastern guy and tell him about this mutual former classmate of ours who wants a pot plant. So he says, “Fuck him. You know what I’d do? I’d give him the plant and then kick his ass and take it back.”
So I relayed the message back to this other guy and we laughed about it.
Is this even how it works? You can get little individual pot plants? And do what? Just keep it as like a houseplant?
So yeah. How do you guys like that Education Connection commercial? Pretty funny, right?
A lot of non White immigrants who are white collar seem to have a lot of distain and resentment for America and Americans. The kids, whom I’d go to school with were all nice and never cause trouble. In the class it was the ideal melting pot everyone dreams of. Even though there were bullies and assholes regardless. But the parents were total dicks. Uppity prices of shit who thought they were better than everyone else. Like Kahn on King of the Hill. That’s a good analogy. These people never smiled, were never cheerful and often forced their kids into endless study and activities that prevented them from immersing in the culture. White patents who voted for Goldwater and Reagan, the supposed klansmen if our time, we’re welcoming of these people and I never heard of any racist incidents. It’s almost like, just maybe White people are actually the only ones who aren’t racist by virtue of welcoming these people who seem to hate being here. But they are more than happy to partake in the liberty and prosperity that Whites have created and in no way exists in the shitholes they came from.
“It’s almost like, just maybe White people are actually the only ones who aren’t racist by virtue of welcoming these people who seem to hate being here.”
Citation needed.
The United States is less than 200 years removed from slavery, and South of the Mason-Dixon line it is still alive and well. I can pull thousands of sources pointing to outward and intentional racism by White Americans, what do you have?
Anecdotes
Slavery is still alive and well in the south? Who knew?
I meant racism, but I bet you knew that. You sly dog.
Having extensively lived both, I see more racism in the north than in the south. They just pretend and try to hide it more in the north. In the south, the racists don’t hide behind more sinister agendas, IMO.
I actually do remember this same fucking commercial. it was on MTV all the time. that’s probably where she remembers it from. what’s weirder to me is what’s the point of reminding anyone of it? it’s not like it was funny, particularly weird, or notable in any way. there’s plenty of commercials out there that gave people a chuckle or were just plain damn weird that reposting would maybe elicit an, oh yeah haha. but this? yeah I remember it. who gives a shit? it added nothing then and nothing now. this commercial played twice an hour for about 5 years straight on MTV and other Viacom networks like Nickelodeon or whatever. but its not like a commercial you’d be talking to someone at school and be like hey you see that weird ad during jackass or rugrats or whatever? No. literally no-one other than the people who made it, and Erin and the source of her repost have ever in 17 years had a single thing to say surrounding this ad.
That’s even more boring than I thought. I assumed it was a local commercial. No, just Mtv bullshit.