Much of the research and focus on the changing world has been the symbiotic rise of economic and quasi-democratic reforms across the globe and new powers (Brazil, China) threatening to usurp the old (Europe, the US).  The other variable, of course, is the continued tension of countries with significant natural resources that continue to be key economic players despite sustained autocratic ruling (what Tom Friedman calls “The First Law of Petropolitics”. 

But whereas before countries were considered autonomous entities, now much of the world can be described in terms of clusters or “blocs”, and economics and politics have followed, with just as many failures (the Euro?) as successes (example).  Regardless of the outcome of specific initiatives, it is absolutely true that the old boundaries don’t matter as much as they used to, and the new boundaries are and will continue to be in flux.  In the old way, political and economic battles had clear winners and losers, and the losers might take 50 years, or perhaps forever, to recover.  In the old way, when you played the game of thrones, you either won or you died.  In the new way, winning intimates a responsibility to look after the loser and have a continued partnership for growth – winning just means your margin is larger.  Winning means that a rising tide lifts all boats, but some boats lift significantly faster. 

With as much chaos in the world, with an unclear rule set and nuanced definition of what success and failure means, it would seem on first glance that the disintermediation of information would compel entities (countries, companies, individuals) to create partnerships agnostic to any interest except their own rational economic self-interest.  Therefore geography, proximity, affinity, and other “itys” are completely irrelevant. 

But the study of human nature (and corporations are people, my friend, as are countries) demonstrates that we are anything but rational actors that solely consider our best long-term self interest.  Study after study demonstrates that as we perceive chaos in our world, we revert to a state of risk aversion by “circling our wagons”.  We trust only in the world we can see around us – that we can touch and experience, rather than trust.

In this type of environment, proximity is king.  Our experiential knowledge, and thus the things we place value in, is highly correlated to our mobility.  This internal corrective mechanism is often subconscious and can manifest itself as geographic and economic tribalism.  If I see it, touch it, work it, explain it, and have tacit knowledge of it, then I trust it, invest in it, and overvalue it, much to the detriment of things I have not directly experienced through my senses.  This largely explains why venture capitalists in Silicon Valley have a “20 minute rule” about how close prospects must be to their office in order to warrant investment.  It explains why journalists from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a national publication, inevitably write 80% of their stories about initiatives in the New York region.  It is why ESPN’s Boston- and East Coast-centric sports media culture, which made perfect sense when the company was headquartered in Connecticut, is rapidly becoming a West Coast-centric culture, now that the company is co-located in Los Angeles.   

The subconscious neurological method is almost Cartesian in its egocentric self-aggrandizement: “I see and experience (it), therefore it is”.     

The challenge, and certainly opportunity, for a Houston-based organization is that our region is drastically undervalued, under-recognized, and underrepresented at the national level. If the logic above is sound, then this is not an intentional slight, but a byproduct of the proximal magnetism of the traditionally dominant geographic and cultural centers around the country. This magnetism acts as a self-perpetuating aggregating mechanism, where resources and attention are drawn disproportionally to a few centers of old power. In times of flux, everyone circles the wagons, intentionally or otherwise.

How then does the greater Houston region break through?  (To be continued, or maybe just deleted.)

An article in the Houston Chronicle recently highlighted the growing number of families in poverty, both from the national and our local perspective.  The bad news: more folks are poor and need help.  The good news: some people say it could have been worse.  I believe that, but am not sure how much consolation it is to struggling folks to know that, in some sort of parallel universe, their bizzaro self is much worse off.  The Chronicle quoted a few notables like President Obama, United Way president Anna Babin, a struggling single mother and some fake hipster.  (How is that for self-serving?  By the way, I meant to say “not quite below the poverty line.”  I’ve had to tell people that all day, to the point where I feel like Ross from Friends yelling “we were on a break!”  But this isn’t about me.  Overtly, anyway.)

The percentage of people in poverty is increasing, up to 14.3% nationally and 17.3% in Texas.  As the article mentions, almost 3/4 of a million people called the 2-1-1 Texas United Way Helpline last year.  Anecdotally, the agency I work for has seen a lot of folks who have never engaged in social services before – the formerly middle class.  It took a lot for them to call United Way and engage in our services.  But just looking at poverty stats doesn’t tell the whole story, or even a lot of the story.  I have a family of three: my wife, daughter, and myself.  We used to consider the dog a family member but after we had the kid the dog became an afterthought.  Don’t roll your eyes, dog lovers – if you’ve had children, you did the exact same thing.  If you haven’t, you will.  In any case, for my family of three, if I was making $19,000 per year, we would not be considered poor.

Let me repeat that – if I was making $19,000 per year, which is somewhere around $9 per hour, we wouldn’t be considered poor.

Can you imagine living off of $19,000 per year?  Housing, utilities (ac during the summer!), groceries, car/gas/insurance (a necessity in Houston), health care, just to name a few.  And Houston is one of the most affordable big cities in the nation.  Imagine trying to live off of $19K/yr in LA or even Phoenix.  Most folks wouldn’t feel comfortable until two or three times that amount.  Why the heck would I not be poor at $19K/yr?

Mollie Orshansky.

Holla at your girl, Don Draper.

You might remember LBJ’s War on Poverty, which was as futile as the War on Drugs, the War on Disco, and my personal War on Crabgrass.  None of these wars will ever have a Mission Accomplished press conference, although at least one of these wars has an offseason.  When all my grass dies.

To win a war, it helps to know what you’re trying to accomplish (either that or you just bomb the holy hell out of everything), so for the War on Poverty the Johnson Administration adopted a poverty threshold created by an economist named Mollie Orshanksy.  In the early ’60s, food was around a third of a typical household budget, so she based it on what a food plan from the Department of Agriculture cost and multiplied by 3.  That’s what defined poverty in 1965, and still defines poverty today.

Whether this standard of “3 times a market basket of goods” was the best measure possible in 1965, I don’t know.  I was -13 at the time.  It was easy to measure and there probably wasn’t a better alternative.  It sure as heck doesn’t make sense today, when food accounts for a much smaller percentage of the household budget.  Food now accounts for about 1/6 of a budget; everything else got much more expensive.  The poverty line is indexed for inflation, but it doesn’t take into account the difference in regional costs of living.  New York vs. Brownsville, for example.  Even Mollie Orshansky argued later in life for changing the formula, stating, “(i)t’s hard out there for a pimp.  It’s actually hard for non-pimps, too.”

This fact (that the formula is anachronistic, not the subject of the Hustle & Flow song) has been long argued and isn’t really in dispute.  A number of interesting alternatives have been proposed, but the fact remains that is is much less expensive to not count people as poor, whether they are or not.  It’s a political nonstarter, except in The West Wing (the show, not the real one).

Maybe the true number of Texans in poverty is close to 30%.  Maybe 25%.  Maybe 1/3.  Would it make us think differently about “the poor” if one out of every three people you saw was officially designated as poor?  Hard to say.  Whatever the true number is, it means that “poor people” aren’t just “other people”.  They aren’t just the homeless guy on the street or the Bed Intruder guy.  They’re people we know, see everyday, work with.  Most are working hard, trying to make ends meet and create a better life for their children.  It’s hard out there at $9 per hour or at $24,000 per year, when the cost of everything is going up but wages and salary aren’t.

This isn’t necessarily the fault of public policy, especially 1965 public policy.  Mollie Orshansky was wicked smart, plus she played a mean clarinet.  It would probably be political suicide to suggest changing the formula to say that there were 6 million new poor people, each eligible for some benefits that would need to be paid for.  What it does mean is that just because we severely undercount poor people doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  And many of them aren’t who we imagine poor people to be.  Many work, very hard.  ”They” have the same hopes and dreams that “we” do, and “they” might have a better work ethic and resilience than “we” do.  They’re just further behind, for many reasons.

It’s hard to argue for nuance and context when talking about public policy.  Much easier to brush things in broad strokes, on both the far left and the far right.  I’d argue for empathy.  I know that’s a dirty word, but I take it to mean this: if I was making $19,000 per year trying to support my family, would I need a little help?  Would you?

You little jabronis...

I thought both the State of the Union and the Republican response were very well done.  It turns out Obama does have a fastball, and will be interesting to see if he starts using it.  I was hoping he’d break out the Sam Jackson “get these motherloving tea partiers off my motherloving White House lawn!” (link nsfw)  Alas, he kept it civil-ish. But he did lay the smack down a bit, with postpartisan postracial postmodernism at the beginning and end. It was like a turkey sausage sammich – hot in the middle with plain white bread on either side.  Speaking of, during the speech, I almost forgot I was white. Isn’t that right, Chris Matthews? People afterward made a big deal about Harry Reid yawning and Alito mouthing off (literally) but there were two Republicans using their blackberries – there was a camera that kept panning overhead from the back, and the blue screens in their laps were unmistakable. Maybe they were tweeting “zomg i cant believe how orange Boehner is!!!1111″. John Boehner really is incredibly orange – it looks like he follows the same “GTL” system as The Situation and Paulie D. Bro, lay off the tanning bed, bro.

There he is! And by "he", I mean a CNN camera!

For the Republican response, Bob McDonnell actually did a good job of being “firm but fair” in his response, although the fawning statehouse audience was a bit disrespectful – they tried (and succeeded) to make it look like a mini State of the Union.  If it was pure showmanship, it went a little far, but if it intended to be a “Federalist/Anti-Federalist 2K”, I’m ok with it.  I’m not sure any modern politician could be that subliminally clever – showing the limits of the federal government by having the speech at the state capital. Someone should have asked him what he thought about Federalist Paper #10, which is the only one I remotely remember from college.  But his speech itself was very good – he pointed out areas of difference and also areas of common ground.  McDonnell’s going to be a political rock star, as long as he doesn’t start trying to marry off his sons to Scott Brown’s daughters. Political hotness will ensue, although TMZ would have a field day. If Jenna Bush sticking out her tongue was a big deal, these kids are going to make moveon.org’s collective heads explode. Literally. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing – as Jon Stewart quipped, moveon has the distinct ability to disgust even people who agree with them.

I'm too sexy for a razor...

In other news, Persian Ron Jeremy (Khalid Sheikh Muhammad) might or might not be tried less than a mile from the twin towers. It took months for NYC to realize that they were going to have to build a mobile fortress around him to keep him from getting lynched wild west style, and that this was going to be very expensive. I don’t really have a point, I just wanted to call him Persian Ron Jeremy.

I motion to raise the roof!

Lastly, I was at an event recently where Sheila Jackson Lee crashed, even though she was invited and said she wasn’t coming. This was fantastic – she crashed an event that she was actually invited to. Of course she grabbed the mic from the presenter and started rambling like Kanye and Taylor Swift. This isn’t the first ninja move SJL has made – there are several other times when she or her aids have showed up invited-but-didn’t-rsvp to events and demanded to interrupt the proceedings to do her own thing. Goldfish also was at a Rita relief center where people were giving foodstuffs and water to victims as they drove through in cars. SJL showed up, grabbed a bottle of water, pretended to give it to someone in a car, and then when the photographer said “we got the shot”, she actually gave the bottle back to the volunteer instead of completing the handoff to the Rita victim. Then she rolled out of the center with her Entourage. Sheila Jackson Lee, you are the worst person ever. Hallelujah, holla back.

This isn’t a New Years Resolution thing. Not that I’m too good for that – I organized a Biggest Loser four years ago with a bunch of dudes and money was involved.  I stuffed my face right before the first weigh-in as an attempt to gain an advantage since we were doing “pre-post total weight loss”. Everyone got bored with it by Feb and went back to hanging out at bars. In any case, the motive this year is more…pure, I guess.

Let’s do a 1 sentence recap of Josh’s perceived body image first. I was chubby as a pre-teen, skinny as a teen, chubby my senior year of high school (thanks, CiCi Pizza!), skinny through college, almost fat in grad school (thanks, World of Warcraft!), and have been somewhere in between until Ava was born, at which point I kept gaining sympathy weight. So while I have an esoteric desire to fit in most of my pants, it isn’t that compelling when compared to a Pizza Hut Pizzone. Num num…

Then a buddy called and asked me to join his basketball league and I realized that would be a perfect distraction goal – I’m 197 as I type and can’t keep up with skinny fast guys on the court anymore. The league starts in about 6 weeks, which is perfect. So there are two ways to go with this. One is to eat right and exercise and achieve a good, sustainable loss (maybe down to 188?).

The other is to go nuts with too much exercise, too few calories, and several crazy diet products and see what happens (180? death? loss of hearing?).  Which sounds like a better blog topic? Darn right. If it works, great. If not, I’ll probably have some great stories about how I was so hungry I almost ate the dog with BW3s wing sauce. Plus I can review a few of the better known diet products. Just to make it more entertaining (or less, either way, really), I’m going to keep a running diary for the next six weeks. Please keep reading or Fat Josh will eat you.  Skinny Josh never would…

Jan 23rd

Just had the “I’m my own biggest loser!” idea and here we go! Scale says 197, which is a) ridiculous and b) pretty darn close to the magical 200-lb “I’m Fatty McFaterson” level. Plus I played ball with Ratty the other day and almost got ran off the court by a 15 year old kid who kept running through screens like he was Rip Hamilton.  It almost killed me. I’m going to seek that kid out in 6 weeks and destroy him like the Terminator. You’re my nemesis, random kid at 24 hour fitness.

The first product I’m going to use is Jillian Michaels Triple Process Total Body Detox & Cleanse plus Probotic Replenishment. Holy shnikes, what a name! I might have bought it for that reason. Like the stuff before “plus” weren’t enough, they had to go and add Probiotic Replenishment.  I don’t know what those words mean, but it sounds awesome. Here is the plan: you take 4 pills a day to detox and cleanse, which sounds disturbingly like a diarrhetic. Hope I don’t have to take 4 trips to the bathroom during a work meeting. And it breaks two of my cardinal rules. 1) Don’t trust anyone who is ridiculously good looking. 2) Don’t trust anyone with two first names. This is off to a really bad start. On the upside, this product is supposed to reduce belly bloat. No word on whether it reduces love handle bloat, which is the affliction I particularly suffer. It also contains Buckthron and Chinese Rhubard powder. Again, I don’t know what those are, but they sound awesome. I’ll either lose weight or explode.

The finger point of shame.

Here goes with the first two pills. And…nothing. Where’s the magic, crazy lady with two first names?

I did have a great run with Ava in the jogging stroller this morning – good start and we promised to do it every Sat. It hasn’t been warm enough, so this is the first time I’ve used the jogging stroller even though I’ve had it for a full fiscal quarter at this point. An hour after I took the pills I started getting hot flashes, but that is probably menopause a placebo effect. Four hours after, I started getting a little dizzy, but that could have been because I just did a ton of yard work for the first time since October. 8 hours after, my dadgummed overreaching neighbor is giving me a list of things to do to my yard, each of which is at least a 2-hour project, and I consider throwing my screwdriver at him (Phillips, not flat head). First homicidal thought? Check! I just looked at the Jillian Michaels warning label. Possible side effects include cramping, nausea, or frequent diarrhea. Great. No warning about homicidal thoughts PLUS diarrhea? Worst product ever.

I was supposed to lift weights this evening, but 3+ hours of yard work made that idea unfathomable. Just a bad idea all around. Not terrible for a first day, besides the “I almost tried to kill my neighbor” thing.

Jan 24

Not much to report today, except occasional hot flashes. I actually did a two-a-day, with leg conditioning/sprinting drills in the morning and weightlifting in the evening. Which almost killed me. The diet thing is harder than anticipated, most poignantly described by the look on my face when Lisa came home with a loaded bbq potato and Nerds Ropes. I’ve never been that upset and joyous at the same time. It was just like the Peyton Manning face.

Jan 25

I feel slimmer! Maybe this detox thing works! Nah – just put my pants on and they still fit the same – super tight – almost too uncomfortable to wear, but not quite. They should make stretchy pants for men like they do for pregnant women. Those are awesome. I’m going to do yoga tonight. Or play video games. One of the two.

Update – it was video games and 5,000 chip calories. This “diet” thing isn’t going so well. I need to find an “all tortilla chip diet”. That would be easier to stick to. Either these pills are making me super hungry or I have one of those Oprah “I eat when I become emotional” problems and Fat Josh and Skinny Josh will fight to the death. Deathmatch! I’ll report back in a week or so, when hopefully I’ll have stuck to the “not eating the entire house” thing, because right now I’m detoxing and retoxing at the same time. It’s counterproductive and delicious all at the same time. Seacrest out. I can’t believe I just said that. Probably a side effect from the crazy diet pills. Until next time…

Most media reviews happen upon release of said media – movies, books, TV shows, video games.  They represent an elitist and snobby perspective on the subject – someone who is paid to critically review the intellectual property, drawing on vast expertise.  The critic also has to finish the product and write the review and get on to the next product asap to make his/her bosses happy.  So not only are professional reviews overcritical from a layperson’s perspective, they are based on a method of consumption that most common folks don’t use.

For example, when I play a video game that is 15 hours long, it takes me around a month.  A video game reviewer will finish the game in a day or two. This makes the experience fundamentally different – repetitious components of the game for the reviewer will serve only as an annoyance, whereas for me repetition serves as a guidepost and helpful reminder of where we left off (see Creed, Assassin’s).  A book may take me several weeks to read, whereas a NY Times reviewer may finish it in one sitting.  Furthermore, I haven’t read every book in the genre, so a book’s similarity to another title doesn’t upset the balance of the universe like it does for a NY Times book reviewer. Nerds.

Anyway, that is the premise for reviews at Josh Being Josh. Real people reviewing things. Maybe several months after things come out. And that’s more authentic and more Random, if not Very Late. Some reviews will be done with my bff Goldfish, ergo the Random Goldfish Reviews. If you aren’t bored out of your mind by now, here is the first one.

Modern Warfare 2: A Very Late Random Goldfish Review

My platinum plaques and status is whack if I’m not the baddest… Eminem, Till I Collapse

Truer words. The song (top 5  of the decade) is perfect for the launch trailer for Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the true Halo Killer. Lots of games aspired to kill Mr. Halo, but none of them lived up to their self-billing. Then Infinity Ward took their Call of Duty split franchise (it’s complicated) from World War 2 to a modern-day setting. Mr. Halo became Mr. #2, and we all know who # 2 works for. Modern Warfare has been #1 for a while now, and the sequel might well be the most anticipated video game of all time.

But Modern Warfare 2‘s platinum plaques and status is whack if it isn’t the baddest. Does the game live up to the unprecedented hype? Keep reading “below the fold”. Pretty Please.

Hecks yes it does.  If I was an ice cream vendor and if I told you instead of getting one kind of ice cream, that for the same price I’d give you three kinds of ice cream, would you say yes to this? Especially if it was 3 different but equally delicious kinds of ice cream. That is what we in the biz might call a good return on investment. Now imagine the ice cream had big guns inside of it, and you ate said ice cream while shooting Neo-Commies with the guns inside of your ice cream while base-jumping from the Empire State Building and landing on the White House lawn with your m4 about to put some freedom bullets into the Russians. And your ice cream has a big American flag sticking out of it. That is Modern Warfare 2. Freedom bullets For The Win. 

Aggregate Score: 90 out of 100.

One more disclaimer, which brings our grand total to 6-ish.  Normally Goldfish and I blend our reviews together in a way that each loses itspersonality and charm and instead is some sort of unholy union of components that might be typically found in a dumpster. But Goldfish’s review this time was so good as a stand-alone novella. So I’m going to give you his review and then mine. There is a lot of content here, so you might want to use the water closet and get some fresh coffee before starting. Or re-starting. Or continuing. Whatever, it’s go time.

Modern Warfare 2: Frat Guy Ascendith (Golfishus Rexus)

Modern Warfare 2 (henceforth called MW:2…even though that makes me want to load my MadCat with PPCs and a few racks of LRM20s) (Ed. Note – dork.) was a bestseller before it was even announced, a game-of-the-year contender before even one unshaven programmer began updating its engine.  Which is why I can’t imagine why JBJ insisted I chime in on this review…we all knew it’d get a 9/10 on the review sites and a healthy and marketable metacritic score.

And likely, it should have.  The first Modern Warfare had a compelling story and one of the most invigorating and action-packed multiplayer experiences to date.  It would take a chimp to ruin the formula developed in the first title.  Well, at least the simians weren’t making most of the game.

Graphics:

This installment looks pretty fantastic.  Environments are more interactive and destructive, particle effects are copious and attractive looking, and the new engine really pulls off some decent draw distances with heavy details.

That said, the game slowed to a crawl for me several times on the 360…most notably during large outdoor maps.  In single player that’s an annoyance, in multiplayer it’s damn infuriating.  That’s the only reason the tweens kept me to a 0 kills 15 deaths score I had. (Ed. Note – I had no such crawl, sounds like a personal problem.)

Game play:

The gameplay is a three-legged stool, with multi-player, spec ops and single-player.

Multi-player is fantastic, and though I continue to rail against the bastardization of RPG elements into ever other conceivable genre, MW:2 does it just as seamlessly as in the first installment…with just the right amount of progression and reward to balance out the reaming I receive on a regular basis while playing online.  It still irks me that if I talk with excitement about getting rank 2 fireball next level I’m some sort of social leper…but you jerks can talk with joy about getting a red-dot scope on your SCAR without even blushing. (Ed. Note – I just shot your mage with my scoped out SCAR before his fireball spell cooled down. You’re a dork and you just got pwnd.)

The unexpected jewel of this game is its coop mode, which pits two against various scenarios from sniping to defending.  The missions are difficult enough that I felt justified in making JBJ go read up on SWAT team lingo so we could communicate efficiently while playing …it’s too bad Ava is apparently adverse to the sounds of fragmentation grenades and automatic rifle fire, as JBJ had to play with the sounds down and without making any noises. (Ed. Note – untrue – she’s a modern warrior, we’re just making her master hand-to-hand combat before introducing weapons.  It’s like doing long-division before getting a calculator.)

The tense and challenging game play of coop leads me to the malformed and nearly vestigial leg of this stool…the single player campaign.  It’s sad to say, that a series that has had such unexpectedly decent storytelling (for shooters) as COD came out with this campaign.  The writers took every compelling moment from MW:1 and decided the only way to innovate on it was to repeat each element half a dozen times.  The campaign even failed to win any points with me by making references to “The Red Dawn”; any 80’s child can tell you that when that movie can’t bring a smile to your face something’s very wrong.  The only thing that might have made this mediocre experience bearable would have been an option to play it cooperatively…at least then I’d have been able to laugh it off with a friend as the Soviets start their invasion of the US on the East Coast (there really ARE other set pieces you can use, game designers).

Badassness:

Pretty darn badass.

Mush! Mush! Mush!

Presentation:

The game looks quite good, even on the 360.  Waypoints and objectives are clearly marked.  The sounds have been tweaked and mastered to a level that makes every weapon distinctive, and the audio is completely immersive (which is good…because for every ambush spot you choose, there’s a damned double shottie kid sneaking in from an alternate route).  (Ed. Note – my Counterstrike name used to be Shottie 2 Hottie, lol.) I can also say that this is one of the first soundtracks I’ve paid attention to in a shooter…and that’s saying something.  Turns out it was done by Zimmer…while he may not be your cup of tea, you’ve got to give it to the developers for paying attention to something that is normally an afterthought.

I do wish many of the levels were developed with a bit more color, and that different enemies had distinctive silhouettes.  The number of times I shot my British SAS team mates makes that whole Tillman affair understandable.

Online:

Coop and multiplayer.  Prepare yourself for foul mouthed younglings and you’ll be ready to dip your toes in.  Matchmaking is better than in the first installment, and I seem to have had fewer games fall apart when the host leaves.  I still recommend taking it in small doses…much like the single servings of Dreyer’s Slow Churned Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream which I’m eating now. (Ed. Note – two things. First, I didn’t want to call you out on the ice cream serving, but neither you nor I have eaten anything less than the entire gallon in our lives. Moderation and ice cream don’t go together. Second, the ice cream analogy is a bit of foreshadowing…)

The game progresses well, and once you haul yourself over the wall of learning the layout of the maps and the dynamic spawning system you’ll be right in the flow.

Much like Kris Kross, this game makes you want to jump, jump.

Modern Warfare 2: My Ice Cream Brings All the Boys to the Yard (Josh Being Josh)

The game is a first person shooter and I strongly believe the FPS genre works best in a modern context. Historic FPSs (like the landfill of World War 2 games) are cool because of the setting, but the guns really suck. Futuristic FPSs (like Halo) are cool because of the guns, but the environments have to work twice as hard to be believable but also fantastical. Most of the time, the futuristic games become boring and the historic games become too much work. Ergo the “in the near future” works really well – you can show off futuristic technology but still ground it with what people see on CNN. The modern warfare setting has meaning, context, and relevance, which I guess are three things that mean the same thing. And you shoot stuff with the same guns your military and cop friends might use, if they were loaded with disposable cash money.

The game has 3 modes, to come back to ice cream. The campaign, multiplayer, and all-new standalone co-op.  Each delicious in its own right.

Multiplayer. The chocolate ice cream. Precisely like the first game, with a few minor tweaks here and there. It has a leveling mechanic similar to an RPG – you unlock titles, weapons, perks, attachments, etc…  and the best “just another round” addictive properties of anything this side of Diablo. Or Borderlands, to be more modern. They’ve optimized the “noob experience”, meaning anyone can jump in and play. You’re still going to get pwnd for the first few weeks, but it feels more fun and balanced. But it doesn’t do this by nerfing the hardcores, either. Everyone likes it, or at least they should.

Co-Op. The Blue Bell Peppermint ice cream. You think it might be good and give it a whirl, and it is so amazing that you may never eat any other ice cream ever again. For-Nev-Er. These are a series of 20+ stand-alone 2-person missions, like novellas with guns. Some have you securing and holding an objective, others have you blowing stuff up, still others have you running like crazy. The best part is grabbing a friend and doing these together. Goldfish’s favorite is a level where one player is running on the ground to an extraction point while the other player hovers above in a Black Hawk helo, dropping .50s to cover him. There are also sniper missions, run n’ gun missions, etc… This mode is the only part of Modern Warfare 2 that is fundamentally different from MW1, but it is amazing. I might use that word too frequently, but Goldfish is parsimonious in his praise, so when he texted me with the word “awesome”, which is a first in our almost decade of gaming, I knew we were on to something special.

Hardest. Level. Ever.

Campaign. The crazy stuff Ben and/or Jerry come up with, like Triple Blue Chocolate Captain American Swirl Reindeer Droppings. (If they haven’t made that flavor yet, first!110101. To any lawyers out there – can I claim intellectual property rights if they do?) Let me address the main complaint against this mode. The intellectual elite of video games say it is too short. Nonsense. That’s like saying a book is too short. There is no too short or too long; there is the right length. The game is 6-8 hours, but would you really want a few extra hours of less-than-optimal content?  Remember the Library in Halo 1? It was too long by two hours. The MW2 ampaign is a great length. The other snobbish complaint is the lack of a coherent plot. Rubbish. You know what a great plot is? One where I shoot the hell out of Commies and then blow stuff up. I was thinking about which of the levels was my favorite – the snow mobile chase, the Gulag, taking back Whiskey Hotel (think a very important building with the initials “WH” ). They are all awesome. The campaign shocks, and then it awes.

The Granulars

Graphics:

How can a game run this buttery smooth when everything on the map is blowing up? I have no idea, but it is awesome. Everything about the game is beautiful – the guns, the character models, the lighting/shadows, the incredible set pieces, the explosions, etc… In fact, I’d like to sing MW2 a little song.  You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, it’s true. I saw your face in a crowded place and I don’t know what to do. I just made that song up.

The only thing, and I mean only, that I can nitpick at is that the White House doesn’t look precisely like the one from the West Wing – the Resolute Desk looks fine, but the chair behind it looks like an $89 chair from Office Depot. So I get to crash $500 million Predator Drones but President Bartlet Obama can’t sit in comfort? Plus the press room looks different than when CJ Cregg rocked the ‘House. But the nerd in me digresses…

Gameplay:

Great shooting mechanics, good physics, great levels of difficulty – the hardness steps up appropriately. It is a fast-paced wild ride. The control scheme is the best in the genre. The only complaint possible here is that the quick-time events have different button triggers – some use the right and left bumpers, some use the right joystick, some use a face button. This really isn’t a big deal, tho.

Badassness:

For all the reasons already mentioned. This is the most underrated component in video game reviews. We play games because they are badass, ergo badassness deserves its own category. I’m all about misusing latin words today.

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, HUH!

Presentation:

Stellar presentation, from the loading menus to the sayings that pop up after you get killed. Which will happen quite a bit.

Online:

Fantastic multiplayer, sublime co-op. The definitive Xbox 360 online experience.

Learning Curve:

Decent learning curve. The only frustrating thing is being shot from angles you aren’t aware of. I guess this makes it more realistic, but sometimes it means that you memorize the map to get through a section, which seems bassackwards. This is especially true of the Rio levels.

Innovation:

Two of the three game modes don’t innovate . The one that does, really stands out.

Tilt:

The tilt catetory is to be able to weight the total score to what seems appropriate. Sometimes games are more than the sum of their parts, and sometimes they are less. Tilt helps balance things out. MW2 gets 9.

Aggregate:

The game of ’09 might be the game of ’10 as well, if you count the sustainability of multiplayer and co-op modes. There is only one way I know to sum up the game.

Till the roof comes up

Till the lights go out

Till my legs give out

Can’t shut my mouth

Till the smoke clears out

And my fire burn out

Imma rip this mess

Till my bone collapse

- Nate Dogg, Till I Collapse

Pics from here, here, here, here, and here.

Here are some things I hope for 2010.

I hope that giant baby in the picture above doesn’t eat the earth. At least until 2012.

I hope that Lil Wayne doesn’t lose his edge now that he is in fact the greatest rapper alive.  There are already signs that point to complacency.

I hope that we can wake up to the undeniable human tragedies happening around the world – can we continue to ignore things just because they’re not in our back yard?

I hope my team figures out how to make low-interest loans to people with high risk profiles in a sustainable way (i.e. we don’t lose our shirt so we can make a lot of loans in 2011 and beyond).

I hope I can fully abstain from cursing before Ava asks me what a shit is.

I hope parents with young children enjoy the blessing of good health. Nothing more frightening than an ill child, out of your control. I pray for parents whose children aren’t well that they receive the Peace that passes all understanding.

I hope I can learn enough jiu-jitsu to feel competent on the mat. Not that I don’t enjoy constantly tapping out.

I hope I can train for one stinking marathon without injuring myself.

I hope every dadgummed (see? working on it) American gets health insurance so african american babies don’t have to die at 3rd world rates. I hope that 3rd world babies don’t have to die at 3rd world rates, either.

I hope liberal Republicans make a comeback. The party of Lincoln is right on paper, you know.

I hope microloans become even more popular.

I hope Ava is a natural lefty in sports, like dad. She just got her first t-ball set! 10,00 hours, here she comes! Just kidding. Kind of.

I hope my back doesn’t ache the entire year again. This is a selfish hope (maybe they all are), but it’s hard to do anything active with a temperamental back.

I hope the comic book movies are more like Iron Man and less like Fantastic Four.

I hope that the UN Millennium Goals on Poverty are actually strived for. Only a few more years until the arbitrary deadline.

I hope that I can end sentences with prepositions. With.

I hope that The Loop Scoop becomes a Houston household name.

I hope Bill White wins.

I hope that Goldfish’s wedding goes well. It is in Louisiana, so there might be blood.

I joke, I joke! Mostly. I hope no Cajun or Creole takes umbrage to that last hope. I’m married to one of you – that means I can make the jokes, right?

I hope the Texans can not fumble away half of the season.

I hope to take a vacation.

I hope to slow down. No, wait, that’s everyone else that hopes that.

I hope John Galt comes back in vogue. But only a little bit. We’ve seen the limitations of de-engagement on behalf of the government. I believe in as little government as possible, but even Dubya became a Keynesian before leaving office.

I hope we can move past trivia to focus on what really matters in this country. Health. Education. Access to opportunity. Liberty. Meritocracy of ideas. Sweat equity. Help for those who truly need it. Moving past incrementalism.

I hope we still enjoy trivia on the side; otherwise Josh Being Josh might go out of business and the $7 I’ve put into this endeavor would be a sunk cost.

Selfishly, I hope if you like Josh Being Josh, you’ll spread the word.

Either way, I hope you have a great year!  God bless.

Pic from here.

Most Underrated TV Shows of the Decade

5. West Wing. How can a commercial and critical success be underrated?  Not only was the show a great poly sci lesson (and not nearly as liberal as it is remembered), but it was incredibly prescient.  The Josh Lyman / Rahm Emanuel similarities alone are amazing – former White House understudy takes unknown minority congressman and turns him into presidential material and then President.  I actually thought about doing advocacy for a career, and it started with West Wing.

4. Glee. You say sarcastically – great list, Reynolds – everyone knows of #5 and #4 is not only a smash hit, it has already led to its own Idol-esque reality competition.  The reason Glee is underrated is not enough guys get past their macho predilections to give this show a fighting chance.  And it is worth it.  The music has already revitalized the concept of Glee Club across America. Jane Lynch plays the role of Sue Sylvester so masterfully that she deserves to be damed (sp?) like Judy Dench.  I don’t LOL much at TV, but “Sue C’s it” is the best Alpha Female antihero we’ve seen in a long time, and her understated dialogue is truly laugh out loud. 

3. Rome. Out of this world acting, scripting, choreography, etc… If you netflix (yes, I just used it as a verb), netflix Rome and watch it after you put the kids to bed.  Talk about an emotional investment in characters.

2. Deadwood. Poor HBO shows.  Deadwood is hard to watch, unless you love the grimy moral turpitude that defines the wild west.  I want to say that Deadwood is authentic as it gets, although not being 250 years old I have no frame of reference.  Best dialogue ever – beautiful prose, sometimes in old english, interspersed with enough f-bombs to make a frat boy blush.  Which I am, and did, on many occasion.  Al Swearengen is my favorite character of any medium ever. Note – the show is the single most NSFW or most other places of anything on this list.

1. The Wire. Maybe the finest show ever made. Problem was, the creators went out of their way to give it as little mass appeal as possible.  The story revolved around the city, not archetypal characters.  The actors were unknown brits, aussies, and african-americans, none of which sell well to the flyover states.  The dialogue was so authentic, it was hard to follow.  And they killed off everyone’s favorite characters, seemingly on principle.  But believe me when I say – it is the best show ever, and if you can make it until the end of the first season, you’ll be an acolyte, too.

Best Video Games of the Decade (that I played – I only had a Xbox & 360)

5. Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Nothing better than stopping a rich guy driving a Corvette, jacking his ride (ala the game’s title), running him over, changing the radio station to whichever one is playing Billy Jean, and then doing a little vehicular mayhem. Maybe I should stop talking now…

4. Guitar Hero 2. First great “guitar game”.  The genre’s best was Rock Band 2, but Guitar Hero 2 was the OG, and everyone wanted to play it, regardless of whether they liked video games or not.

3. Modern Warfare 1. The Halo killer.

2. World of Warcraft. They call it World of Warcrack.  Married guys call it the Marriage Killer. I put 450 hours into this game IN GRAD SCHOOL.  I gained 20 lbs and lost 6 months of sleep and am lucky Lisa didn’t kick me out of the house.  On the upside, my level 60 dark priest was always in high demand. I can’t ever play another MMORPG, so maybe it was a lesson well learned.

1. Knights of the Old Republic. Better than any of the Star Wars movies. The music was totally epic, and the fact that you don’t get a light saber until almost 10 hours into the game sets the tone for method and patience rather than pwning foolz with the sabrez.

(Disclaimer  - Dragon Age may end up on this list, but I’m still too early into the game)

(Disclaimer 2 – The Old Republic, a PC MMO version of #1, will be #1 for the 2010s but I won’t play it, upon court order and threat of wife and child)

Best Things That Happened to Josh of the Decade

5. Getting shut out of all 12 Clinical Pysch PhD programs I applied to. It was like Hubris myth without the falling to my death thing. It made me think about what I really wanted to do with my life.

4. Muhammed Yunnus’ autobiography Banker to the Poor. Changed my life and gave my career some focus.

3. Hitting 2 homeruns in softball. This really shouldn’t be on the list, but I’d been trying to hit one since I was 4.

1. Lisa said yes. Sucka!  Actually, there is a cute story behind the proposal and acceptance.

1. Ava

Best Trends of the Decade

5. Connectivity. 

4. Using movie lines to have entire conversations – effectively.

3. Everyone has a voice.  See #2.  Mostly a good thing. Anyone can become super-empowered, to borrow from Tom Friedman, which in itself acts as a democratizer.  Yes, I just might have made that word up.

2. Social Media. Which you’re consuming right now.

1. Going Green.

Best Random Happenings of the Decade

5. Larry’s couch, 2003.  Between graduating college and starting grad school (or for some people, law school, which I call the Great American Postgraduate Babysitter), there is typically 6-12 months of uncertainty with life, love, future, and even living arrangements.  For the threadbare postgraduate sojourners of Delta Upsilon, there was a respite, an oasis if you will, at Casa Larry Dizzile.  (That’s not his real last name. I feel comfortable using first names but not last names.  It’s complicated.)  In the span of 3 months, 3 different brothers lived on his couch, including myself for 6 weeks or so.  The further away we get from that time, the more the legend of the couch grows.

4. Hottest girl on beach, 2000.  We went to Spring Break in Panama Beach in 2000.  Among the good times that ensued, one afternoon we were walking to Subway and some random drunk group of guys drives by, rolls down their window, and yells at Lisa “you’re the hottest girl on the beach!” She was mortified, but everyone else thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard and some still repeat it to this day. Obviously, I take no umbrage with the phrase. You probably had to be there to realize how incredibly random and funny it was. 

3. College fights, 2000. We had one in college, and it was glorious. In our minds. We didn’t start it, but we ended it.  Actually, like all fights, it kind of ended on its own.  The second fight wasn’t a fight so much as me getting randomly punched in the stomach by the captain of our softball team before the championship game.  You see, I was giving a “win one for the gipper” speech to the team (the bawdry college version of the speech) and stopped to spit, which baseball managers are known to do.  There was a very strong wind, and the spittle flew onto the leg of the captain, who summarily punched me in the stomach.  He was very strong, so I just kind of bent over and everyone looked around for a minute and then went to their positions.  Needless to say, we lost that game and I had digestive issues for 3 days.  The real fight is a much better story.

2. Bachelor party love, 2004 & 2007. We did my bachelor party on the semi-cheap and went to New Orleans, which of course was riotous fun.  The party was just dying down and we’d all gathered in my room to *fall asleep* while regaling each other with stories of our heroics on Bourbon Street. Then all of the sudden, Larry (he of the #5 fame) bursts into the room with 2 enormous pizzas and the place went crazy like the Rockets just won game 7.  Larry looked like Super Mario with big greasy pizzas. You really had to be there. But this story isn’t about love between men and pizza, it’s about a more traditional form of love. Later that night (well, that morning, but you know what I mean), Brad went out on the town and happened to come across a bachelorette party from Houston.  There was one girl he liked, so he kept asking her out. 6 times she said no, and on the 7th she said yes.  They were married 2 years ago and had their first child about 8 months ago.  

That was the first.  The second story is much better, but I can’t tell it here.

1. Lightning strikes twice, 2008. Lightning struck Lisa and then our AC unit within 2 weeks of each other. No joke. We found out soon after that Lisa was pregnant with Ava. What are the chances of even one of those two strikes happening, you might ask. 1 on 240,000.  Not as low as I would have thought, to be perfectly honest. And go ahead with the “Zeus is the father” jokes – we’ve made them all.

Best Songs to Run to of the Decade (NSFW)

5. Lose Yourself & Till I Collapse – Eminem.  Till I Collapse is a far superior song, so of course everyone thinks Lose Yourself as the new Eye of the Tiger.  

4. Walk it Out Remix – DJ Unk, Andre 3000, etc.  Andre 3K justifies the size of his posse by rapping “even Jesus had 12 disciples”.

3. Put On Remix – Young Jeezey.  I myself try to Put On for H-Town.  

2. Jesus Walks & Never Let Me Down – Kanye West.  For the sake of this list, these songs are one – one flows directly to the next anyway.  If you haven’t heard Never Let Me Down, it’s one of the best rap songs ever made.  Just like #5, the song that is more popular is actually the worse of the two.

1. Hustlin Remix – Rick Ross, Jay Z, and a bunch of other rappers.  

(Disclaimer – A number of other Kanye songs almost made the list, and the best running music is Outkast’s stuff from the late 90s)

Best of Youtube of the Decade

5. Chocolate Rain.

4. The Hamster. I never got this, but everyone else thought it was hilarious.  Maybe I should have put the various Single Ladies videos here.

3. Keyboard Cat. This is my fav, but there are plenty.

2. Star Wars Kid. You feel bad for him until you realize he’s famous and rich and we’re not. Here is the best remake, by far.

1. Numa Numa.  The original, and still the best.

Best of JBJs of the Next Decade

5. Seeing where this social media thing goes.

4. Becoming fat and happy.  Or fit and unhappy.  Gotta choose one, right?

3. Learning a lot.  About a lot of stuff.

2. Financial products and services to help low-income folks lift themselves out of poverty.  Microfinance FTW!

1. Ava’s first everything.  Hay ride, fireworks, t-ball, day at school, cannonball off the diving board, first book read to Daddy and Mommy, etc…

Thanks for reading my rambles.

*Apparently there isn’t one right answer to this question.  But every time I try to add links to the different points of view, my browser crashes.  Don’t know what that means, but it means something.  So if you’re interested, google it yourself so your browser can crash.

I was lucky enough (and self-promoting enough, I guess) to do This I Believe on Houston Public Radio (HPR) a few months ago. It’s all sorts of Social Work-ey. Here is the link (click on the little play button under the picture):

This I Believe

I got to go up to the station and hang out with Paul Pendergraft and get a tour of the place. KUHF-HPR is a gem and it also happens to reside on the best campus in the country. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t too cool for school. Get it? Eh? Never mind…

Anyway, people say the University of Houston is the Harvard of the South. It’s not. Harvard is the University of Houston of the North. Word to your mother on that.

Even though I read the essay like a nervous 3rd grader, Paul asked me back for My Source for the fall campaign.  Brandon Wheeler, a colleague who nerds out on HPR, and I went and chatted about why we value public radio. Here is that link, and scroll down a bit:

My Source

We might have been higher if we wore bow ties.

(Home for the day today with baby duty, but baby went sleepy.  Is this post too self-aggrandizing?  I thought about adding a poll with that question but don’t really want to know the answer.)

(Pic from here)

I’m sorry, but it’s true.  I’m including myself on that category.  This “FaceSpace Interwebs” thing is so convoluted with its shifting social norms and unwritten rules that I’m never sure if I’m doing it right, or if all the 23 year olds are laughing at me.  You’re either laughing or nodding your head, and if it is the latter, then listen closely – it’s not your fault.  Look at me, old person.  It’s not your fault.  It’s not your fault.  (Language on the youtube clip = NSFW, and that means “not safe for work”, you old person.)

It isn’t our fault.  The ground is shifting and we’re just trying to keep up and maybe see what people from our high school look like now.  Admit it.

Here is a series of questions you should consider asking yourself.  I don’t know the answers.  Maybe one of the 20-somethings can answer them in the comments section below?  Come on, whippersnappers!  We old people need Facebook Rules.  Would it be cooler if we called them Fac3buk Rulez? (No.)

What happens when someone you’ve never met sends a friend request?  What if you know of the person?  What if you’ve talked on the phone or via email but never met face to face?  What if you have met but haven’t said more than 10 words to each other?  I have probably a dozen of these friends.  I’m cool with it, but does that make me uncool?

If your work sets up a Facebook page, how do you react?  I may or may not have sent the fan request to almost all of my friends.  Are they irritated?  Are they happy to know more about where I work?  Did they just click on something and will never go back? (Yes.)  Do I need to censor myself now?  (Yes, a little bit.)  How do I respond when work space starts to co-mingle with personal space?  Is there one answer or does everyone have to decide for themselves?  Are there generational nuances?  When does 1 question become 12, and when will it ever end?

Can I use FB to try to promote my new blog, inadvertently ticking off all of my friends?  (Absolutely!)  Do I know how to use it properly?  (No!)  Did I double-spam everyone with the “80s” post in the news feed? (No, I quadruple-spammed.)  If it brought in more hits, will I do it again?  (Hmmm…)

How much can you look for former classmates of the opposite gender, just to see what they look like, without turning into a Facebook Stalker?  Again, don’t pretend like you haven’t done it.  Is this different than looking to see what your old friends look like?  Is looking once to see what your middle school crush looks like ok, or should we be taking an “Abstinence Only” approach?  What would the equivalent of “Abstinence Plus” be?  Don’t Facebook Stalk, but if you’re going to… What comes next?

Is checking FB at work the equivalent of taking a quick phone call or checking your gmail?  Or is it crossing some line?  Is it different than taking a smoke break or walking around the block (which only works in Houston for 7 days all year long)?  My question is moral/ethical rather than about policies and procedures, and I’m not advocating to break company policy.  Just asking.  Is Facebook Abstinence a realistic difference or is it just an arbitrary distinction from the 30 other things people do each day - coffee in the break room, chatting about a movie, taking a quick call, etc.  It’s called a break room, right?  What’s the difference?  (That’s a question, not my argument/point.)

To make the rabbit hole even deeper, what if you have an iPhone and are waiting around for a meeting to start.  Is it ok to check FB then?  Everyone else is chatting about their weekend plans.  I’ve only had my iPhone for a week and no meetings have started late yet.  What if it is an external meeting, at the United Way or something?  Is this ok but internal meetings aren’t?  HELP!

There are so many more questions, but you probably stopped reading 3 paragraphs ago.  If not, please do feel free to weigh in.  This was intended to be a fun blog entry, but these are real questions if anyone has opinions.

Of all the trends in recent memory, this 1980s cultural renaissance has to be the most fun.  The music, the movies, the hair, the tights.  This column could just be a bulleted list of great stuff from the 80s, but here is something even more interesting: while many things contributed to this trend, I think there were a few “tipping points”, and those tipping points may have been Maddox Pitt Jolie and Natalie Portman.

By the way, calling the 80s a “cultural renaissance” probably has Leonardo DaVinci and the rest of the Mutant Ninja Turtles rolling over in their graves.  See?  Even 80s jokes are more fun!

We’ll get to Maddox and Natalie.  But first, have you noticed that there are three distinct age cohorts celebrating the 80s revival?  People who are now around 40 were the 80s.  A People who are now around 30 witnessed the tail end of the 80s.  I’m a smidgen over 30, so in 1989 I was 11.  People who are around 20 have no personal knowledge of the 80s.  They’ve created an understanding of the 80s, but it is based on other peoples’ memories and relics of popular culture.

One great thing about the 80s is how distinct it was.  A John Hughes movie can’t be confused with anything else: it is totally 80s.  What the 20s cohort has done is to reconstruct a “world of the 80s” like an archeologist would reconstruct a 2,500 year old city at a dig site.  My little sister is 22, and she and her friends have co-opted the youthful spirit of 80s without realizing the irony that kids from the 80s are now…how do I put this delicately…are now old.   All three age cohorts celebrate the 80s, and maybe even in similar ways.  But we come to the celebration from a number of different points of view.

So how does this relate to tipping and Maddox and Natalie?  Lots of things contribute to a phenomenon like the 80s revival. VH1 helped with both its I love the 80s shows and its trash reality TV.  The band in the movie Old School playing Total Eclipse of the Heart helped.  Friends helped with their flashback episodes, especially Chandler’s Flock of Seagulls and Ross’ perm and moustache.  The Thriller scene from 13 Going on 30 helped. There are dozens of other examples. Another less obvious, but more sustained, influence is that kids of the 80s have their own kids and some disposable income to spend on them.  I always knew that when I had kids, any son was going to play with GI Joe and any daughter was going to play with My Little Pony.  It’s something I knew I wanted to share with them.  Multiply that by millions of kids of the 80s having millions of their own kids.

Those things help.  But Malcom Gladwell wrote a book called the Tipping Point in which he describes “social epidemics”.  (I’m on a Gladwell kick these days. Just like a kid who didn’t get a Nintendo until he was 15, I’m going crazy about stuff everyone was going crazy about 5 years ago.) Social epidemics are trends and fads, like the 80s revival, that spread much like a strain of the flu would spread.  Some people are such great social salespeople (intentionally or otherwise) that they are “contagious” and can help turn a small fad into a large trend.  In the case of the 80s revival, contagion starts with Brangelina’s baby.

Mohawks never fully went extinct after the original 80s.  They came close but stayed barely alive as fohawks.  But fohawks are really a signature of the Aughts (the 2000s), not of the 80s.  It wasn’t until Brangelina decided that they hadn’t done anything crazy in 3 days and probably needed to shave their son’s head into a Mohawk that things started to tip.  There were a few other babies with mohawks, but no one really important from a pop culture perspective.  The public’s first reaction to Maddox Jolie Pitt’s mohawk, or at least mine, was to be taken back.  I can’t believe they did that to a baby!  Then after the shock wore off, a lot of dads started to realize that it was a great idea.  They said to themselves – I can’t rock a mohawk in my office cubicle, but my baby son can!  It is fun and funny to talk about and makes me remember the 80s.  The good old days when I didn’t have to work at the real life equivalent of Office Space.  So some dads, usually despite the protest of moms, vicariously rocked the mohawk through their sons.  Fun story, end of little baby fad, right?

Wrong!  Who else can get away with doing stupid stuff without repercussion?  Not teenage girls – there is too much social cache on the line to step too far out of the norm.  But teenage boys, on the other hand, thought – wouldn’t it be funny in an ironic and self-effacing way if I showed up to school with a mohawk?  So some teenage boys started wearing true mohawks instead of just fohawks, mainly to be funny and for attention.  It’s the same reason that I shaved my head except for a jheri curl in the front when I was 17.

My high school yearbook picture.

But when teenage boys started showing up everywhere with mohawks, some teenage girls did their cultural homework on youtube and through parents and older siblings and realized how fashion forward they could be by going 80s.  They could dabble in this style while still staying within the safety of some social norms.  They were empowered, to a certain extent, by their male peers.

When teenage girls started going 80s, some of their moms started getting nostalgic (and dads said – I told you so).  But not enough for a full trend.  Next was Hollywood.  In Hollywood, there are always actresses that started out young and then age (like all humans do), while everyone around them doesn’t seem to, because a new crop of young actresses is always coming up and trying to dethrone the not-so-young-anymore establishment.  And when I say “not-so-young”, I mean by Hollywood standards, which is 28.  Which is ridiculous, but hey, that’s show biz.

The 28 year olds always fight this tooth and nail, partially because they don’t want to admit to themselves they’re not 19 anymore, and partially because it limits their career options and earnings potential if they can’t audition for the 19 year old role anymore.  They fight it really hard.  There is a famous story about Jodie Foster going in to audition for a role thinking she was auditioning for the role of the daughter when the casting agent thinking she was auditioning for the mother.  Needless to say, it didn’t turn out well.

So how does someone like Natalie Portman, an incredibly bright and talented actress, convince herself and the rest of Hollywood that she can still play a 19 year old?  By shaving her head. By picking up on emerging trends and pretending like she invented them.  And wouldn’t you know – older high school girls were starting to dress like the 80s!  The 80s were a decade of youthfulness.  If I’m a 28 year old starlet, I’m jumping on the 80s bandwagon and pretending like I’m driving it.

And by the way, the Natalie Portman 28 year olds hadn’t lost their cultural relevance just yet, so they actually pulled off the feat.  And then the younger Hollywood jumped on board.  And we followed them.  And now we have ourselves a full-fledged trend.

Any picture that has Reagan and Cobra Commander drinking martinis next to ET has a ridiculous amount of awesomeness per square inch.

We all know what comes next.  Everyone starts having 80s parties for birthdays or Halloween.  INXS gets back together on TV.  Transformers and GI Joe make billions at the box office.  Even Glo Worms make a comeback. My 29 year old wife wears tights, and don’t think it will be long before she’s putting Ava in them.  Probably right around the same time I start buying her My Little Pony.

Gladwell’s theory is that social trends spread like a good form of a disease.  It takes a lot of “carriers” but also a few very important carriers like Maddox Jolie Pitt and Natalie Portman.  I don’t think any of the carriers aside from maybe crazy Brangelina were trying to start an 80s renaissance, but maybe that is how the world goes round. And we are the world.  We are the children.  We are the ones to make a better day, so let’s start living.

Pics from here, here, here, here, and here.