I've relocated!

Please direct yourself to my new, official website...

Da da da daaaaaa!

www.jacobwilliamsonline.com

I'm official.

Cynical Asshole Syndrome

If you're in college like me, you're more than likely friends with several people on Facebook who are from upper-middle class families - attractive white kids with comb overs, Sperrys, or sundresses who may or may not be in a fraternity or sorority, or involved with other activities around campus. Their parents paid for them to take a trip to Europe last summer where they traveled for a few months, visited Rome, and got their photos taken in front of various fountains, landscapes, and coffee shops. They probably made a blog about it.

They also probably spent last spring break in Honduras. Or Puerto Rico. Or Guam. Or Brazil. Or whatever little village in whatever little country is being sponsored by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, or UNICEF, or whatever organization has a chapter at their college, this year.

I get it - it feels good to be a part of that kind of organization. It's fun to be on a team that is working toward something good. It also looks good on a resume. It also helps to battle lonliness when you're a part of a ragtag group of fun-loving college students from various suburbs around the country and are a part of a philanthropic organization. The kids in those groups have a lot of fun working together, hanging out afterward, and generally get laid on a regular basis.

Maybe it's evident where I'm going with this already - sometimes it irritates me. I don't think I blog too much about things unless they do bother me. Here's the catch, though: I don't like that it irritiates me. In fact, I don't even think that it's those organizations in and of themselves that irritate me. Or the people in them. What always bugs me is the way people pat each other on the backs when they talk about having worked on those projects. It bothers me that people receive accolades for spending a week in a foreign country, get some photos taken with a few little brown-skinned children to put on their Facebooks, and then go home and resume preparations for a clean, priveleged American life. You're free to feel good about doing that, and you're free to toot your horn about it and let your friends rub your belly and ask you all kinds of fascinated questions about it, but I don't know if I'll be one of them. You probably didn't do it so I would rub your belly, anyway, did you?

I wish I was excited by it all. I want to be on the train. I want to like it when I hear about a celebrity promoting this cause or that cause. I want to feel inspired by it, turned on (not sexually) in that way that human beings are when there's a movement existing around them. I don't want to think that the "Occupy" people are a bunch of iPhone carrying graduate students with the time and means to take a few days off from working at Starbucks to go change the world by pitching a tent on the sidewalk and passing out phamplets. I also don't want to feel so distant from all of it. I don't want to look at the movements, C-SPAN, the news, poverty, and simply think about it analytically. "Things happen. People get angry. The government can't give them what they want and probably doesn't have the means to," is my general thought process, or something like it. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm a cynic, I'm just cautious about putting my passions behind a particular movement. I don't know that I agree with zealotry or nationalism or what have you. The downside to that is not having stakes in much, and that's an empty feeling, I think. Maybe people need to be occupied with the potential to gain or lose something important to stay happy.

I also find a lot of it to be self-serving. It feels good to be a Good Samaritan. But I don't think most people even know what it means to be that anymore. The Good Samaritan stopped in the middle of the street and bandaged up a hurt stranger, carried him to the closest inn, stayed with him until he was well, and left money with the inn keeper with instructions to take care of the stranger until the Samaritan returned, and he would repay the inn keeper whatever of his own money he would need to use to take care of the man. The Good Samaritan didn't wait for spring break to do good, he didn't take pictures with the man or tweet about it, and he probably didn't put it on his college resume. He probably never devoted any great amount of time toward volunteering at some college sleepaway camp, I imagine he was just an honest, hardworking person who didn't think twice about doing good for another human being.

But I don't think that's what it's even really about for most of these kids, anyway. I'd just like you to admit that you're not going on a trip to save Africa because it's good to save Africa, you're going because it's exciting to go see a new place. All your friends are going, too, and that pretty girl who's your college chapter's treasurer is definitely going, and you'll probably get a lot of time to hang out with her. Most of the kids going are pretty popular and cool, it'd be fun to be a part of that.

That's all. Just say it's cool to go. That's all I want to hear. Say you're lonely. Say you crave structure. Say you want to get laid. Say you're trying to get into medical school. Just say it. Say any of those things. Then I'll gladly smash a bottle of champagne on the side of your cruise ship when it takes you to your spring break destination and wave you off supportively. Or however you're getting there.

You've got a douchey exterior and completely human, transparent intentions. I don't know why it'll make me feel better to hear that (it probably won't) but I just want to hear that said out loud, sometimes.

I'M A CHiP!

I was just informed last night that I'm officially in CHiPs! (The Chapel Hill Players!) I've wanted to do this since I've been at UNC and it's amazing that it's finally happened. I just got a lot more excited for this year.

chipsimprov.blogspot.com/
www.chipscomedy.com

Playwrights!

Anyone interested in writing a staged work (or writing in any capacity, for that matter) ought to find and read this book.  I just sat down and read through it in a few hours, and it's got a good little bit of advice without having its head up its own butt with digressions, repetitions, etc.

So... nipples, huh?

This may be the greatest clip of any cartoon ever.  I miss Ren and Stimpy... that weird, weird show.

From an interview with Jeremy Bronson, head writer of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, by Rachel Mason of the Upright Citizen's Brigade:

RM: You read a lot of the submissions that come in for the show. What would your advice be to someone sending in a packet?

JB: I don’t know if this is useful advice at all, but I will say it’s a determining factor in people getting hired. I think you can tell when there is kind of a joy behind the packet. I mean nobody really loves to write a packet, because the goal is to get work. But that said, you can sort of sense a joy behind certain jokes people write. And obviously when you are writing for a show you're going to be writing in the voice of the host, in this case Jimmy, but you also need to write what you think is funny and that you enjoy or otherwise what’s the point. And I think that comes across. It’s almost perhaps more important than trying to mimic or get the voice down perfectly which I think can evolve for people, and often does.