Why Won’t You Date Me?

Why won’t you date me? This is the question at the heart of Nicole Byers podcast, which bears the same name. Nicole Byer is a comedian, actor, and perpetually single resident of Las Angeles. Never having had a real romantic relationship, she explores topics related to the dating scene with her guests.

This podcast is very NSFW due to it’s sexually explicit content. Normally, that does not bother me as long as the sexual content serves a use beyond shock value. Unfortunately, I found some parts of Why Won’t You Date Me to be overindulgent in it’s sexual nature solely to produce shock value. This is best illustrated during the segments where Nicole reads her fan mail out loud, messages detailing outlandish sexual acts her fans would like to preform on her. Nicole encourages this behavior, and delights in the most ludicrous ones. I could argue that this does serve a purpose, that being entertainment, but I wonder who exactly the target audience for this kind of comedy.

The podcast as a whole is entertaining, some of the episodes are even preformed in front of a live audience. This answers my question of who Nicole’s target audience is, because her live shows are successful with loud applause and laughter, mostly containing women and gay men. Nicole actually does a bit in her live episode titled Running Into Past Flings where she locates the only straight, single male in her audience, and asks him if he will date her. His response is muffled, and Nicole interprets it as an unenthusiastic no.

While the podcast aims to discover the underlying reasons for Nicole’s maidenhood, topics vary from dating a man while he’s in prison, to therapy, navigating life as an actor/comedian, losing both of her parents, bad dates, dating apps, pornography, basketball, and being body positive. It is humorous, and Nicole has great chemistry with her guests, who offer a wide variety of insights behind dating and sex. I would classify the humor as self indulgent due to the ridiculous nature of the subject matter, which usually pokes fun at old flames or awkward sexual encounters. Ironically, for being a body positive activist, Nicole semi-regularly brings up flaws in other people’s appearance, such as men being short and bald and women looking “busted” when she sees them in person and not Instagram.

The original question of Nicole’s singleness takes the background in the most of the episodes, and it becomes apparent that the answer lies in her intimacy issues, not the lack of available partners interested in perusing a relationship with her.  Because the content is so NSFW, I would only recommend this podcast for people who like hearing about explicit sexual encounters, though not all of them are the kind she receives in her fan mail. There is an aim at sexual education and liberation in a lot of the content they cover, specifically when her guests are part of the LGBTQ+ community, as they often are. This is one reason I would continue to listen to this podcast in the future. The upfront and non-apologetic take on  sexuality is refreshing, and in regards to sexuality, this podcast is a zero judgement zone.

Open relationships: when should you tell a potential partner?

Hello! I am changing my civic life topic from education to identity and will proceed with topics related to identity in all future blog posts. 

This blog post aims to explore the topic of polyamory or “the practice of having multiple intimate relationships, whether sexual or just romantic, with the full knowledge and consent of all parties involved” (Polyamory).   In this blog post I am going to refer to polyamorous relationships as ethically non-monogamous, shortened to ENM. Specifically, I want to explore the topic of what is the right time for individuals in ENM relationships to bring it up to potential partners. I was interested in perusing this as my first blog post because I have heard slightly varying experiences from my friends in the community.

Of course, there is no formula or scientific method to love and relationships, it varies from person to person and from experience to experience. So within exploring this topic I’m in no way trying to allude to a system people should follow. I am no expert, that’s why I was interested in looking up what I didn’t know. I am also not polyamorous, my curiosity regarding this subject comes from observing my friends struggles with this question: when should you tell people you’re interested in that  you’re in an open relationship.

One of my friends had a poor experience when she casually brought up her boyfriend during a first date; the guy actually fled the scene. His reaction to this may have come from surprise or reflex but “while we should not conflate being polyamorous with being queer or a person of color, it’s true that polyamory is a misunderstood and stigmatized relationship style” ().

A manager at one of my jobs has been in the community for years, and was clear on her belief that people should know before you meet with them for any kind of date. One of my good friends has been in an ENM relationship for around a year and told me they would probably tell someone before going out with them, and would definitely tell before a second date. Does this conflict with people being able to separate who they are VS their identity as a polyamorous person? Would it reduce the amount of people interested in perusing a relationship with them? Would it be more beneficial for your date to get to know you for a bit before you tell them about your lifestyle?

Is there a clear line in the community? I took to the internet for answers.

In the first article I found on self.com, the author stated that a rule her and her partner have in their ENM relationship is that they must obtain consent from the person who is getting involved (Fischel). They did not however, disclose when the consent needed to be obtained, or how soon into the new relationship the informtation was brought up.

The second article I found advised to tell your date early on in the evening, and before you get sexual with them (When and How Should I Tell My Date I’m Polyamorous). This article brought up one of best framing points I found which is that outside of polyamorous subcultures, there is a default assumption of monogamy. I would agree that most people who are not around or within a ENM community are probably not sitting across from their date, eating dim sum, and wondering whether or not their date is currently in a committed relationship(s). So if we do have a default assumption of monogamy, should we ask people what their relationship structure is before perusing them? Would this put too much of a focus on a part of their identity, rather than seeing them as a whole?

A Psychology Today article reccomends first trying to date within polyamorous circles (Sheff). This makes sense. But what if you don’t have a large community in your area? Sheff suggests dating apps and websites and also to “be on the lookout for an opportunity or find a way to casually bring up consensual non-monogamy, and ask if the person has ever heard of it and what they think about it.” These recommendation are a system to first gauge the response your potential partner may have before perusing them.

I feel like I learned a lot from reasearching this topic, though the answer was as I expected: it depends. Identity is fluid, that’s one of the reasons I decided to switch my civic life topic, the fluidity of identify is fascinating to me. Though even for people who, life myself, are not in ENM relationships, I find importance in being educated in this topic.

 

Works Cited

“Polyamory.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/polyamory.

Mogilevsky, Miri. “15 Comments Polyamorous People Are Tired of Getting.” Everyday Feminism, 20 Oct. 2015, everydayfeminism.com/2015/10/comments-polyamorous-ppl/.

Fischel, Valerie. “8 Questions People Ask Me When They Find Out I’m in an Open Relationship.” SELF, SELF, 20 Nov. 2017, www.self.com/story/open-relationship-stories-rules-questions-people-ask-me.

“When And How Should I Tell My Date I’m Polyamorous?” Bay Area Relationship Center, 12 June 2017, bayarearelationshipcenter.com/when-and-how-should-i-tell-my-date-im-polyamorous/.

Sheff, Elizabeth. “Seven Steps For Coming Out to a (Potential) Sweetie as Poly.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 2015, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-polyamorists-next-door/201506/seven-steps-coming-out-potential-sweetie-poly.

 

 

The Last Podcast on the Left

I came across this podcast by accident. Last Friday morning I was looking through Spotify for a comedy podcast and saw a playlist titled Laugh Out Loud. In a hurry as I always am before leaving the house in the morning, I downloaded the first episode I saw without any further investigation. During my walk onto campus I realized that I had downloaded episode 399, Heaven’s Gate Part 111 – Burrito Heaven, from Last Podcast on the Left.

When I saw the name, a tribute to The Last House on the Left, a horror film by director Wes Craven, I knew I was getting into something along the lines of horror and/or crime. I was disappointed at first because I’m not a horror person; horror films freak me out, and I’m too sensitive to dive into true crime content. That’s not to say I don’t follow the news, I’m not an ignoramus, I just can’t get into the gritty and disturbing crime-as-entertainment world so many people find enjoyable. That being said, I do like hearing about things like cults and aliens, which the Last Podcast on the Left covers more often. I was also interested in seeing how this subject matter is approached in a way that is “laugh out loud funny.”

I’ve been into researching different cults after becoming convinced my  best friend joined one in 2014, a concern I haven’t been able to bring up since she no longer is allowed to communicate with people outside of her church. I had not however, looked much into Heaven’s Gate, and to be honest the California cults all seem to run together in my mind.

Anyway, I found this episode to be hilarious. The podcast team consist’s of  Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, and Henry Zebrowski, a trio I was not surprised to find out are long time friends and also comedians. Their chemistry is what makes this such a great podcast in my opinion, because you can get a group of funny people together, but it doesn’t always equal funny content. It’s kind of like supergroups in music, yeah you can take the best three members of the most popular bands of that genre and combine them, but it doesn’t mean the chemistry will be right enough to make a good album.

Their subjects also have a good range from cults, aliens, ghosts, being psychic, conspiracy theory, lesser known serial killers, vampires, to other general aspects of horror and the occult. If you, like me are sensitive to these kind’s of topics, the good news is they have 500 episodes, so you can skip over the one’s until you find subject that interests you more. Their podcast’s are also very well researched and correct the false facts or rumors we have regarding the subjects. For example, I learned that the cult leader of Heaven’s gate Marshall Applewhite did not tell his follower’s he was Jesus, but that he was the next alien Jesus. Meaning, there has been more than one alien Jesus, not just him and the original alien Jesus that we all know, but several.

That’s good to know. Also, the content really is funny! I did laugh out loud many times during this week while listening to the shows, and that mixed with the great chemistry of the team is what will bring me back to this podcast in the future. I would recommend this to people who have an interest in the occult but from a spectators point, not a participants point, because they do poke satirical fun at the subject matter, which may be offensive if this these are your core values and beliefs.

Chatty Broads with Bekah and Jess

Chatty Broads with Bekah and Jess is a podcast listed under Spotify’s lifestyle section. I was attracted to this podcast after seeing it in the lifestyle section because I like the word “broad” and I love a great chatty podcast.

This podcast is longer than most, episodes lasting usually between one and a half to two hours. I liked the longer podcasts because it’s good for on the go downloading. I can download a single two hour podcast and be good for the whole day, as opposed to downloading 3 shorter podcasts to fill my listening needs.

The downside, in my opinion, to the length is that for every podcast I listened to, I felt as if the last 30 minutes were unnecessary to the overall point. What I mean is, by hour 1.5, we had already gotten to the deep point of the subject matter, explored it, had a great place to wrap it up, and yet the broads are still chatting. However, this is the name of the podcast after all! Chatty Broads lives up to it’s name, and I think if you were someone who had a long work commute, having one longer and chattier podcast would be pretty nice.

Another downside I found in this podcast is that I am just under the age group of relatability. Bekah and Jess are both married and have children/are pregnant, and a lot of their banter relates back to married and mom life. I cannot, however, give anything a lower rating just because I am not their target demographic. I can imagine a lot of mom’s in married life truly enjoying their gentle and funny takes on their lifestyle.

Even though I’m not able to relate to their mom world, I really liked Jess and Bekah’s content. In the episodes I listened to they offered what I would describe as a new take on hip subjects of art, sexuality, sustainability, and spirituality. For example, in episode 106 (WTF is Human Design?) the broads invite over Erin Claire Jones to talk about innovations in human design. Human design in this context is not, to everyone’s surprise, build-a-baby technology, but the idea that your birthday can tell you a lot more about who you are and how you preform in a professional environment.

It has resembles astrology, and it’s advertised to be useful in making successful work teams. Depending on your exact date of birth you get a chart, and this chart will tell you all types of things that can help you succeed in your professional life. Let’s say if you’re a #52, you are in hyperdrive after waking up, have a surge of creative energy that must be harvested into practical ideas immediately or you will lose the thought, and then you need a mental break around 3pm. Or if you are a #68 you are motivated all day, and act as the mule of progression in your workplace, sort of helping the 52s keep on track, and you may also need to sleep in your own bedroom at night.

Those are ideas I am paraphrasing from the podcast, the traits don’t correspond to the exact numbers I gave, but you get the basic idea. I hope that if I ever work at a job that used this kind of human design to make work teams, my chart would say I can’t work weekends.

I enjoyed the episodes of Chatty Broads I listened to, and will continue to dabble in their content in the future. I would recommend this podcast to new moms, young married professionals, and, people interested in new age ideas from a practical perspective.

VIEWS with David Dobrick and Jason Nash

The VIEWS podcast is listed as number 15 on Spotify’s top podcast chart. It is a weekly podcast that dates back to 2017 featuring two popular Youtubers, David Dobrick and Jason Nash.

David and Jason are known on YouTube for their daily vlogs that involve various pranks, skits, and stunts. Think filling a bathtub with Orbeez content but instead of a bathtub its a Ferrari, and instead of Orbeez its exotic animals. If you don’t speak YouTube speak what I am saying here is that they are known for their extreme stunts and adventures while still staying relevant to what’s trendy and clickable on YouTube.

The VIEWS podcast offer’s listeners a behind the scene look into their lives and some of the work that goes into preparing the videos that go onto their YouTube channel, and the projects that ultimately fail and are not released at all. I don’t follow their YouTube channels but I find the behind the scenes look into their professional lives to be fascinating as they have a lifestyle far different from most working adults.

This inside look includes their thinking process behind gambling in Vegas, investing millions of dollars into stocks, and why they decided to bury Jason in the back yard. They also offer their thoughts while meeting and working with celebrities such as Justin Bieber, David Blaine, Kendell Jenner, and Natalie Portman, to name a few.

David and Jason live wild and crazy lives so I did not encounter any dull moments in the 10 or so podcasts I listen to. Jason is older than David, being a 46 year old man, so much of their funny banter involves Jason being old and decrepit. Jason has a much more realistic worldview than David, who is 23 years old and came into considerable fame and money at a young age, and often acts as a fatherly figure counteracting David’s recollection of events with a dose of humility.

The running gag of Jason being practically geriatric mixed with David’s general lack of awareness with the way the world functions outside of being a 23 year old millionaire living in LA is hilarious. They balance each other out perfectly and add great texture to the topics they discuses. Both David and Jason have lively and engaged voices that are easy and uplifting to listen to.

While it can be hard to relate to the majority of the episodes of the VIEWS podcast, besides Jason’s struggle with losing weight and going to the gym, I found it enjoyable to listen to. It was fascinating being able to “dip into” the lives of these creators. I would recommend this podcasts to people who are interested in YouTube life or the entertainment industry.

Topic for Civic Life

I chose education for my topic this semester. I have an interest in all 4 of the categories offered to us, but I am an education major so I find it’s the most important to look into topics and issues in this field.

I would like to look into information about alternative types of schools in the US. When I lived in Providence I worked with around 10 high school kids and I was shocked over how many different types of high schools Providence had. They had the typical public high schools, public high schools which students would have to test to get into, French immersion private schools,  alternative or art private schools, Catholic private schools, Hebrew schools, public nursing and EMT high schools, some kids actually attended the community college for high school credit, and of course the elite and notorious all girls Wheeler School, just to same a few. Providence isn’t a big city, so it was crazy to me that one handful of high school students could represent all these different types of education programs.

Of course, access to private schools VS public schools is a privilege, so I am most interest in alternative public education and what the benefits of this can be. How can we go about fostering these programs? Should they become more available?

Should we start language emersion earlier in student’s school careers? Is this necessary? What would the cost be for language teachers in elementary school?

Of course there is the cost of college education and what are you really getting out of it. Is it worth it? Is there more to attending a college campus than just paying for your classes and books? What else does Penn State offer it’s students for their future career success? What can we gain or lose from attending an online college?

 

New year/new me/ new passions

Well alright! I am going switch up my passion blog this semester so my group members will not be subjected to reading me analyze grunge music lyrics. The main reason I’m kicking grunge off this blog in 2020 is that it can get very depressing, and I want to focus on more light and fun energy for the new year and spring time.

I have two main ideas forming in my brain for this blog. The first one will be easy for me to pull off because it will be me listening to and reviewing different podcasts I find on Spotify. This will be easy because there are a ton of different podcasts on Spotify. Lifestyle one’s for young professionals who still like to get wild on the week-ends, fitness ones for with men as their target audience, fitness ones with women as their target audience, humorous ramblings, spirituality, true crime, the list goes on. I have Spotify premium, so I can download podcast off WIFI to listen to during the day when I not in class, and I listen to podcasts while I am at work, so this would give me enough time to effectively try on a podcast and give it a fair review and summary.  If anyone didn’t know this,  a Spotify premium Hulu bundle is available for college students for $4.99 a month.

My second idea, which I think would be more fun, is to attend different activities and performances around campus and talk about my experience with them. Our campus is brimming with tons of cool clubs and events and I have yet to even attend ONE of these. Usually, when I’m not between classes I’m at home in my apartment doing my homework away from everyone and the world. This is a habit I would like to change, and would plan use the discipline of this blog as a commitment to it. The problem with this occurs with the fact that I work all weekend every weekend.  I live off campus, so I have to find time to fit in working enough to fund my rent and bills and general existence, which ends up being crammed entirely into the weekends.

Anyway, the point of that is I have to find events happening during the week, which while hardly an impossible task may complicate my life. In the off weeks I can’t find anything or am way too busy to attend something, I want to list and report on different things I can find happening around campus (and State College) so that the reader may be inspired by something they see happening in the future.

I talk about Courtney Love

So for this weeks blog I’m interested in doing something a little different which is talk about Courtney Love, one of the most famous celebrities from the grunge era. The reason I want to talk about her is because when I was doing research for my paradigm shift essay I ended up reading a long Vanity Fair article about her and her life during September of 1992 and I thought it was very interesting. The way the journalists in several of the articles I read about her describe her is generally derogatory and judgmental, it’s almost as if they forgot they were interviewing a Seattle rock musician in the early 90’s (a group of people known for their antics and controversial behavior), not an Upper East Side society hostess.

So my thesis after these articles is that there was lot of judgment towards Courtney from the journalists for acting this way because she was a woman. I mean Sid Vicious wore a swastika T shirt, pretty f*cked up yet he was admired by many for testing people’s limits, and he was a punk musician, making people mad and challenging society was his motive operandi. The members of Sublime laughed in a documentary I watched once at the fact they let their dog poop in the office of a major producer. The grunge attitude has a massive influence from the Godless punk era (though composition wise has more in common with metal music) and Courtney was just that: a young punk living a wild and indulgent lifestyle like the rest of the Seattle musicians were at the time. But she wasn’t a man, so maybe it just wasn’t considered as cool and edgy for her to be a walking disaster.

The Courtney I’m talking about here isn’t the modern day one, the woman who suffered through 30 years of slander and bad plastic surgery, but the outspoken and intelligent Riot Grrrl of the early 90’s. My favorite part of the article was about Courtney’s fued with musician Kat Bjelland, the lead singer of another Seattle gunge bang, Babes in Toyland.

Kat had apparently stolen one of Courtney’s velvet dresses, among other things. Courtney’s style during that time is called kinderwhore which holds ripped up vintage doll dresses as it’s centerpiece.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464644886535183588/

 

“Kat has stolen a lot from me,” she says, hitting on one of her very favorite themes. “Dresses. Lyrics. Riffs. Guitars. Shoes. She even went after Kurt. That was the last straw. Because I put up with the lyric stealing. And I put up with her going to England first in a dress that I loaned her. Now I can’t wear those fucking dresses in England anymore.”

 

 

 

 

 

Grunge fashion and Maggie watches tik tok (big news)

So last night I overheard my significant other listening to this cool band Slint, their music is super grungy with it’s slow and distorted guitar; it’s great. However my odd reaction to it was along the lines of “man this is depressing.” That’s when  I started thinking, oh no, is this how my blog group members feel when I talk about grunge on my passion blog? Because, grunge is objectively pretty depressing if not in lyrics but in melody, and even when the message is beautiful, it’s a hollow, haunting type of beauty. This haunting beauty is why I like grunge so much though, so I’m just blaming my poor reaction to Slint on the fact that I recently got into tik tok, yes I know, and I’ve been binge watching compilation vids for the past few days. Now I’m on this  weird tik tok music grind and music that isn’t a slightly upsetting wii theme remix just isn’t doing it for me, so I decided to use this post to talk about grunge fashion.

https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/471681760954843206/

The above photo is a good representation of classic grunge fashion. The combination of layers and use of flannel is suspected to have come from the fact that Seattle, where grunge was born, is cold, and Washington state has a large logging industry, so these were the kinds of clothes already being worn by bundled up lumberjacks in that area.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/317151998740375606/

Above is a photo of Shannon Hoon, who was the lead singer of the band Blind Melon, and another good representation of grunge fashion. Long hair on boys, baggy shirts, and baggy worn out pants were popular. I still subscribe the to long unkempt hair look personally.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/photos-alice-in-chains-in-the-nineties-11590/1996-5-17688/

Above, is Alice in Chains, slightly dressed up, but still a good representation of grunge fashion with their long hair, layers, and flannel. Here’s some more photos which are good representations of classic grunge fashion.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/608548968376055924/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/564216659559848902/?d=t&mt=login
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/306596687103594107/

Right, so does this inspire anyone to go out pick up some second hand baggy pants and flannels, grow out their hair, stop brushing it, and come up with some impressively layered looks? Well, maybe not, but grunge fashion from the Seattle scene ended up inspiring many major fashion houses in the 90’s and still impacts the runway today. Flannel has gone a long way from humble lumberjacks to high fashion.

https://www.thecut.com/2015/03/changing-my-mind-about-marc-jacobss-grunge-show.html
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/grunge-meets-la-glam-mens-runway-at-represent-971927

I personally am a huge fan of grunge fashion, and spent a lot of years in super baggy T-shirts layered over thermals and oversized men’s pants. I was of course imitating the way my favorite musicians were dressing in their youth, but honestly dressing that way was affordable, genuinely very warm, and the fabrics were long lasting, which makes sense when considering it’s origins and those being the functions good clothing needed to serve for loggers in the pacific north west. I got rid of 99% of my grunge clothes a year ago when I moved because, well shocker, they had gotten really dirty and worn out over the years. What do you guys think of the looks?

Long Gone Day

Mad Season is a grunge super group, meaning that it contains members from already popular grunge bands around the Seattle scene at the time, which is this case is Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and the Screaming Trees. They only released one album, Above (1995), and Long Gone Day is my favorite song from that album. Here are the lyrics:

“So much blood I’m starting to drown
Runs from cold to colder
Time to time the sky’s come down
To help me lose my way
Tears and lies for answers
You and open veins, God knows I’m gone
Girl I just want you to
Come on down
Lord it’s a storm and I’m heading to fall
These sins are mine and I’ve done wrong, oh babe
Come on down

Long Gone Day
Mmmm, who ever said
We wash away with the rain

See you all from time to time
Isn’t it so strange
How far away we all are now
Am I the only one who remembers that summer
Oh, I remember
Everyday each time the place was saved
The music that we made
The wind has carried all of that away

Long gone day
Mmmm, who ever said
We wash away with the rain

So many tears I’m starting to drown
The rain in heaven’s all come down
Silver spoons affix the crown
The luckless ones are broken
Fears and lies for answers
You and open flames
God knows I’m gone
And I just want you to
Come on down, hmmm

Lord it’s a storm and I’m heading to fall
These sins are mine and I’ve done wrong
I want you to, oh, I just want you to
Come on down

I fear again, like then, I’ve lost my way
And shout to God to bring my sunny day

 

 

When I hear this song I am filled with the overwhelming emotions off loss. Especially, when the narrator asks if anyone remembers that summer they do.

“Everyday each time the place was saved
The music that we made
The wind has carried all of that away”

Because Layne Staley joined Mad Season after leaving Alice In Chains I speculate that he is speaking in regards to his lost bandmates. They captured the moments of the summer in the music, saved,  but the wind has carried those times away from them. This is what I meant when I said I think one of the main themes of Grunge is loss of “before”. What is the narrator craving so deeply here? The magic of his past memoires with his best friends? Why did he have to leave them?

“Lord it’s a storm and I’m heading to fall
These sins are mine and I’ve done wrong”

So we can see here the narrator feels guilt over their actions, perhaps the actions that lead them to the separation from their group. We get the feeling of the self destructive nature grunge follows, and the anger turned inward towards yourself.

“So many tears I’m starting to drown
The rain in heaven’s all come down”

I just love the language here. I don’t have much to say about it. I’m sorry if this was a lack luster passion post! I’m just feeling so mentally drained today I can’t even get excited about grunge!