thinking since '98

i've been a fan of bo burnham's ever since i stumbled across one of his videos while in a deep dark hole of youtube a couple of years ago. what. immediately became my favourite comedy special, nudging donald glover's weirdo out of its long-running title at first place. i still love weirdo, but bo's mixture of music, narrative and cringingly perfect puns is near impossible to beat.

when i saw him post tour dates for his make happy tour i was bummed. they were all in america so oceans and borders were keeping me away from my comedic hero. but when i heard that he would be releasing it all in a new netflix special, i was beyond stoked. i marked the date on my calendar with a smiley face. i counted down the days. and when the moment finally came, i told my abundant pile of urgent homework to go fuck itself while i mentally prepared myself for what the next hour would hold.

and, boy, i was not disappointed. i had grown up since what. and so had bo. there was still the same surprisingly beautiful piano pieces under shockingly dark yet hilarious lyrics. there was still masturbation jokes and bo's magnetic stage persona that managed to look down and above at the audience simultaneously. there was still the acknowledgement and then subsequent disregard of political correctness. but the thing that made make happy so different to what. was that bo wasn't really hiding anymore. this time it was personal.

in what. bo didn't really talk about himself. or he did but it was so obviously not real. there was that distinct separation between the act and the person. in make happy, though, that line was blurred. bo was shamelessly putting it all out there - his fears and concerns and worries. he wasn't there to please anyone. not anymore. i mean, he straight up told the audience that his "biggest problem is you" before quickly covering it up with an actually really good kanye impersonation.

look, i'm not using this as a basis to declare that bo is mentally unstable or deeply depressed. i can't just decide to interpret his left and right brain separating as not authentic and then the moment he talks about real shit as an accurate reflection of his actual self. i don't know him. but i do very much hope that he is happy.

the thing that really stuck with me, though, was his exploration of internet culture. i hated it. because it was so so so true.

our generation is fixated with being on display and big corporate people sitting at the head of long tables on the top floors of skyscrapers are grinning devilishly as they continuously dish out social media and technology that allows us to do so and we so eagerly embrace. and i'm not saying this as a condescending hipster teetering over my decaf-skinny-one-sugar-affogato. i'm saying this because this is me. i'm so preoccupied with having people hear me that life is running by and i barely glance up from my obsession with being noticed to see it go. i don't want to live as a complete unknown where everything i do has absolutely zero effect on anything at all. i want to be important.

in a more deep lull of the show, bo advised all of us internet warriors that "if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it." and i took that to heart. only one person was going to live this life and that was me so why should it matter if anyone else knows about it? so i tweeted that quote on my twitter and haven't posted since. but even then, let's be real, i was silently waiting for someone to comment on my wittiness. and even then i only chose to ignore my twitter because i had merely 24 followers who were definitely ignoring me. and even then i'll probably join the twitter-verse again one day.

and that was that. fuck everyone else, my only sole purpose in life was for me and i'll live for me and i'l die for me. done-zel washington. so why, dinushka, are you posting this on a blog that is so obviously created for other people to pay you the attention that you so maddeningly crave? well, let me tell you, reader-asking-me-questions-that-does-not-exist.

i realised that it was not the audience that i was after. that was just a potential byproduct of the real goal. because all i really want in life, is to leave my mark. that's it. i don't want to be born and live and die and thus have any traces of myself blown away amongst the sands of time. that would be just so pointless. imagine living a lifespan of experiences and work and having absolutely nothing to show for it. ok, maybe there's children and relationships and ooo the connections you make wowee. except that's just not me. i want to be so much bigger than that.

i know that one day we'll all be forgotten. i know that one day cities will crumble and the human race will be just fossils and the earth will be swallowed by the sun. but that's not today and today i want to be remembered. today i want to matter.

(side note: the lighting in make happy, jesus, it was fucking lit)

(born in 1998 and have a voice to share with the world? click here to find out how you can be heard!)

when i was 13, my family and i went on a holiday to my parents' home country of sri lanka for a few weeks. during our stay, we spent a night at one of my uncle's house. we had been on holiday for about a week by then and i had already finished up all the reading materials i had brought with me. when i told my 18 year old cousin this, she promptly took me into her room and directed me to her book shelf where amidst various picture-books and hardbacks, was a neat row of archie comics.

i had never even heard of the archie universe in my life, but after that night i was obsessed. the next day, my cousin took me to the bookshop where she bought them from. i use the term 'bookshop' loosely; it was basically a hole carved out of the wall in a shopping centre filled to the brim with every book you could imagine and a man squeezed into the middle who knew them all by heart. when we told him what we were looking for, he confidently dug through the books stored to his right and presented us with a stack of archie digests. from my pocket i pulled out basically all the money my parents had allocated me to spend on souvenirs for the trip and bought 14 comics. i still have them on my shelf above me as i write this right now.

that was just the beginning and over the last few years the iconic squad of riverdale have always been on the back of my mind. when i'm having a secret midnight feast i think of jughead. when i do something nice for someone else i think of betty. when i feel like throwing a tantrum i think of veronica. and, of course, any love triangle in any pop culture work ever pales in comparison to the shockingly functional mess that is betty-archie-veronica.

when i heard they were revamping the comics last year i was pumped. i remember when they did a different art style in jughead's the matchmakers. it was weird and after a few rows i kindda got used to it but it was definitely comforting to turn the page and have my classic cartoons waiting for me in the end. likewise, when i saw the new designs for the 2015 comics i was conflicted. but now i can confidently say i like it. it was modern and new but the stories still held the classic archie foundations and values. they respected the characters and while their origins might have swayed slightly from the original comics, it still managed to bring the sweet and all-ages appropriate riverdale world seamlessly to the 21st century while achieving a sense of freshness and relevancy.

when i heard that the cw was creating a live-action tv show, i was even more hyped. i never really got into the original animated series so i was excited to see my beloved crew on the small screen. that is, until i heard the intended direction of the highly-anticipated adaption and i realised that the only similarities between the comics and the show were going to be the characters' names and hair colour. that's it.

i read a vanity fair article on what we could expect from the new series and i'm still in shock. apparently the first season is going to focus on a murder. a murder. in riverdale. riverdale being the most wholesome and least likely place for a murder to happen in the entire universe! archie and co. are known for getting into bizarre but they're always charming and innocent - not homicide! and who is going to be our poor, dead victim? none other than mr jason blossom. the jason blossom, you ask? cheryl's twin brother? hates "townies"? can be surprisingly kind? is in love with betty? frankly, who knows. in this version he's probably a crackhead sex addict because that's what everyone else is:

betty is being drugged by her mother to focus on school. the bromance between archie and jughead is fractured. betty and veronica's friendship is on the rocks. but the part that had me reeling the most was "the sudden end of [archie's] forbidden relationship with riverdale's young music teacher, ms grundy". um... what? ms grundy? teacher ms grundy? this ms grundy?

(image courtesy of netflix.com)

master of none is really good. like... really good.

first off, thank god it's a netflix show which means i was able to watch it among netflix australia's very limited collection of shows.

but i think that the reason i loved master of none was because it was so devastatingly real. it wasn't like a shitty sitcom with dumb, eccentric plots that you know doesn't happen outside of a screen. it was like a literal snapshot into the life of a 30 year old in this day and age.

at least, i assume it is. i mean, i'm 17 so i'm probably not part of the intended target audience, but this show really made me fantasise about what my life's going to be like in thirteen or so years. i've never been in a relationship. i'm still brainwashed by disney's fairytale lifestyle. but master of none made me think about what real love is like and maybe what it'll be like for me. it's not always great, i get that. and i'm not going to lie, that's scary as shit for me. but dev and rachel taught me to enjoy the little things and i'm excited to do that.

a big part of why i enjoyed the series, though, was its honest insight into culture and racism. you don't see a lot about south asian issues in hollywood. as dev frankly put it, "no one cares". the episode, 'indians on tv' nailed the industry's fear of having too many south asian people in a film or show because they think it'll be labelled as an indian thing or whatever and narrow down the prospective audience. and 'too many' for them means, like, two people. and that's something that i've always hated about western media - never seeing anyone like me. i come from a sri lankan background but i don't watch sri lankan films. i barely understand the language! i've only been to the country twice. culturally, i relate more with hollywood than bollywood. so it's finally great to see my brown people represent.

also, his parents' acting skills were adorable and i really respect his decision to cast them on the show - it elevated the realness of the show to even greater heights.

i loved master of none's witty dialogue, diverse cast and honest outlook on the real world. amidst the heavy metaphors about the hardships of life, there'd be a seemingly stupid joke that was really a classy critique about our generation hidden underneath smart (and sometimes dark) humour.

but that ending though. omg, yessssss. treat yo self.

(born in 1998 and have a voice to share with the world? click here to find out how you can be heard!)

i've seen a lot of disney shows in my time, but girl meets world is by far the strangest.