David Boles: Human Meme

If you’re a freelancer, you know well we now live in a, "Pitch Me!" Culture. We reason why some people expect other people to give up their grand ideas for free -- all without any money, fame, or gratitude, applied!

We only appear to be what we are not. We take to the skies of the scalpel to wonder how we can change who we are in the facade, and never think how our infrastructure may never be modified or laded.

If you’re Twentysomething, the world appears set against you, and it is! We share thoughts on the young, who are and abandoned into a world that has lost patience for the doctor's note afterthought.

There are always unknown, underworld, perils to the spirit. We examine the careers of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Charles Strouse, J.D. Salinger, and Truman Capote to decipher the dangers of becoming the new, mainstream, standard of excellence -- and the trap it sets for the aesthetic of the True Artist. 

"If I were to write a subtitle today, it would read this: 'When You Pay Horrible People to Teach You!'" We share the story of an old foe -- an Ivy League Playwriting Instructor -- who, on the first day of class, declared he would "rather drink his own urine" than to have to "teach another section of new Playwrights." Salud!

Freedomland, USA was an idealized experience of what a true melting pot the United States had become; it lasted four years. We dig into the murky depths of the Baychester salt marshes in the Bronx -- where "White Flight" became a social test of turning. 

Small things fester into big things that kill you. We take a look at the tiny insults we hold onto for 40 years, so that we may feel better, later, about the first betrayal. Who knew a small town, Doppler Weather Radar system -- overlay idea! -- at a small, Midwestern, radio station, could cause such dishonesty and longing?

There is no right to privacy when you ask people to follow you, and you then take their time, attention, money, and admiration, in the exchange. We wonder why Richard Simmons, and even Dr. Drew, appear to feel besieged by the very bespoke fame, and attention, they bespake while starting out on their Hollywood careers.

Kayfabe -- can be dangerous -- if you don’t know the game is fixed right from the first bell. We apply -- The Art of Kayfabe -- to the modern world, and the Evildoer Presidency. If Kayfabe is the fourth wall -- what happens when that suspension of disbelief, is never believed?

Marcus Aurelius spent time alone to think about the world. Because of that rightful introspection, in writing, from one of the last five great Emperors, we have insight into the history of what fed us. We share some favorite quotes from Marcus' "Meditations" in examination.

“Ah Bartleby!  Ah humanity!” We share why Herman Melville's short story classic -- Bartleby, the Scrivener -- is the perfect anti-hero-protagonist-villain for memeing in our modern world. We are Bartleby. We cannot be Bartleby. 

All men fall. The great man stands back up. The greater man helps his fellow man rise again, too. We examine what it means to be a man in the meme of a modern world where circumstances spin and facts change on the whim of the whirlwind. 

Most musicals die ugly and forsaken deaths. We reveal the ugly underbelly of creating the Broadway musical -- where money and mischief -- are more important, and valued, than doing the right thing for the benefit of humanity. 

"Tell them that God bids us do good for evil." We unravel the wrappings of the Evildoers among us. They have taken over and are preparing to drown the rest of the non-believers. Now is the time to stand up to stare them down!

The last question of cruelty we have left to answer is if we need to kill to live. We cut open the Omaha Stockyards, animal cruelty, and our life habits of aging diseases -- all related to eating the right foods and not the wrong lives.

Judge Judy has two words for us, and two words only: DON'T FALL! We explore aging, and health, and the physiological, and social norms, of falling, and of being, felled.

What happens to a classically trained actor who turns to a life in television? We take a turn as he discovers the vortex where talent and expectation meet to find an undivine end in 1970s episodic television.

If we have one, singular, predictable, human failing it is this: We LOVE too much! Yes, love is NOT the answer. Love is never enough. Love is overrated, overexposed, and over-occupied! We take the Tricorn love beast for a wrangle in the depths of definition. 

Can you identify someone’s Race only by listening to the way they speak? Can you identify someone’s Race by the way they pronounce words? Can you identify someone’s Race by the the way they pattern a spoken phrase? We investigate the definition of speech against Race against the color of expectation.

Values of the American West have been preserved in television. We watch the history of the Wild West unfold in many broadcast television series that aired over three decades. What is lost to history? Was anything won back in the dramatizations?