My Diary of Watching HBO Girls
Entry 1
This is my diary of watching a show on HBO. The show is called Girls. You may have heard of it. It was created by a woman named Lena Dunham. My homosexual friend Matt is a big fan of the show and of the woman. However, he recently admitted to me that he never even finished the show.
I am watching the show for the first time. I am on the third season of the show. I have been watching the show because I have had a very bad cold which means I have been sitting on the couch in my boyfriend’s apartment and asking him if he can buy us an HBO subscription so that we can watch television shows such as Girls and Breaking Bad and if we can play video games such as Fallout 3. Before I asked my boyfriend, I asked my friends if they could think of any rich people that would buy me an HBO subscription. My friend Lee who is a lawyer and who detransitioned from being transgendered asked me if I’d like to use his account. I informed him that this was against the law.
Girls is sort of an American “slice of life” anime. Other American slice of life animes include Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. My boyfriend, Sargent, is a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I personally don’t like the show very much because I find Larry David’s bad behavior, and the fiascos he gets himself into due to his bad behavior, to be extremely distressing. However, sometimes it is funny, especially when Larry and his friend were playing with that doll. I don’t remember what the episode is called, but they were playing with a doll and that was funny to me. (Sargent informs me that the episode is called The Doll.)
Sargent walked into his living room while I was watching HBO Girls and paused it for a moment to ask me what it is that I like about this show. I suppose he asked me that because he knows me very well and he knows I am not the type of person to watch slice of life anime. I basically only like movies or television shows if they have an explosion in them.
I told Sargent that I don’t necessarily like HBO Girls, but I watch it because I feel like my “friend” Lena Dunham has created this extremely successful television show, and even though it’s already really famous and stuff, she and I are close, so she’d really like to know how I feel about it. So even though her work isn’t really “my thing,” I’m more than happy to go ahead and check it out. Plus, all my friends are really into it, especially my homosexual friend Matt. So there must be something culturally relevant about it, and the show will probably help me understand the people around me and their interests.
Sargent says that he likes the show for similar reasons. I say that I also enjoy the parts of the show where the girls are happy and have a boyfriend. I like when the character Shoshanna is happy and has a boyfriend because I like her and I like her happy-go-lucky attitude.
One thing I don’t like about the show is that everyone is always getting into an argument and fighting. It is extremely stressful. But it is not as stressful as Curb Your Enthusiasm. Curb Your Enthusiasm is so stressful that I refused to watch it or be in the same room as it for probably over a year. This is because I believed that the negative energy of Curb Your Enthusiasm psychically transmitted itself into my life and caused my roommate to get mad at me. I also did not eat sushi for over a year because I believed that it was a combination of the sushi and the television show that caused my roommate to get mad at me. Slowly I started to reincorporate both sushi and Larry David back into my life, but not at the same time. You’d be surprised at how hard it is to reincorporate those things separately. Everyone is always wanting to eat Japanese food and watch Curb Your Enthusiasm at the exact same time. Probably because it’s a slice of life anime so everyone thinks it has sort of an “oriental” vibe.
If I were to enter the universe of HBO Girls, I would stand in the middle of Hannah’s living room and shout, “Stop fighting.” And then everyone would stop fighting, and I would go around the room and ask them to list the positive qualities that they see in each other, and then we would talk about how grateful we are to live in this nice apartment and in this nice neighborhood. That is another thing I like about HBO Girls – they live in Brooklyn, and I also live in Brooklyn. Therefore, it is relatable.
However, I do not understand how the show is relatable in other ways. I do not understand HBO Girls. I don’t know if people enjoy feeling stressed out and that’s why they watch it, like maybe the tension is erotic to them in the same way that Texas Chainsaw Massacre is erotic to me. I do not understand why there is nudity and sex in it and I don’t like when sex happens to Shoshanna because I like her and I get scared that the boy is hurting her. But actually, my roommate, who I thought she got mad at me because of sushi and Larry David, I used to hear her boyfriend doing sex to her sometimes and I would cry because I thought that he was hurting her. But then she told me that it was fine and that he was not hurting her. So, that is a lesson that I learned.
It’s like Minecraft. HBO Girls is like Minecraft because Minecraft is one of the scariest games in the world. Minecraft is one of the scariest games in the world because it gives you the illusion of safety and you are doing things like crafting and stacking blocks and then all of the sudden the Enderman comes up to you and you feel extremely frightened. Resident Evil 7, for example, is very scary, but that is the whole point. You understand that there is shock and horror at every turn and so you never let your guard down. And if you do, well you’re just a fool.
Another thing I like about the show is that there is that handsome man in it, Adam Driver, and he kind of reminds me of my boyfriend. So I guess that is another relatable thing about the show — the Adam Driver character is sleepy in the morning and Hannah has difficulty waking him up, and I think, Hey – this reminds me of my life! Also, once I was on a film shoot and at a sort of “kickback” situation in Los Angeles with the man who plays Shoshanna’s boyfriend, and he invited me to pick plums off of his plum tree. So when I see him on television, the show becomes “relatable” because I can “relate” it to a moment in my life which happened to me.
Sargent asked me if I’d like him to put the television on for me, presumably meaning if I’d like him to put on HBO Girls. And I told him that I was scared, because I feel like the negative energy of HBO Girls is psychically transmitting itself into my life. I was scared of this because last night we had an argument. Here’s what happened: I said that he hurt my feelings while we were out to lunch with his family friend, and he said “Yes I hurt your feelings while we were out to lunch with my family friend but I’m sorry and I didn’t mean to,” and I said “Okay well I think you did mean to because you were engaging in this sort of ‘two against one’ behavior which occurs when someone in a group of three is attempting to bond with one member by poking fun at another, and this is a totally normal and common attempt at bonding, but it’s also not ideal and hurts my feelings,” and he said “No it wasn’t on purpose,” and then we were both silent for a few minutes and then it was over. As you can see, this is kind of a classic “couple’s argument” because we disagreed about a topic.
This was extremely alarming to me because it’s exactly the sort of argument that would happen in HBO Girls. So that must mean I’m absorbing the show and getting into arguments with my boyfriend because I think it’s adorable and “indie sleaze” of me to do so. That’s one thing about HBO Girls, actually – I really think this show made a lot of my female millennial associates think it’s cool to be sort of annoyed at their friends all the time because it makes their life seem more dramatic, serious, or interesting. And perhaps they are right. I do tend to take those types of women more seriously, the ones that are always annoyed or “not talking to [x] right now because of a disagreement about [y] that happened at [z]’s birthday party.” I think if you’re always having problems like that, it probably means you’re a model, socialite, CEO, or billionaire.
Sargent said that while it’s possible that HBO Girls influenced me into getting into an argument with him, it’s also okay to get into arguments and I needn’t be afraid of watching HBO Girls. Therefore, we are going to watch more HBO Girls.
Entry 2
We decided to watch Breaking Bad instead of HBO Girls because we like it more. It is a really good show largely in part due to its explosions and *epic* one-liners —oftentimes one right after the other. 😼
Breaking Bad is better than Girls, much like how lot of shows are better than the Simpsons. I have a lot to say about the Simpsons, I have a lot of rage inside me about the Simpsons. But I can’t talk about the Simpsons for reasons that remind me of that falsely attributed Voltaire quote:
People like to use that quote to talk about Jewish people, but I think if I were to get on Twitter and make a post criticizing Jewish people and then make another criticizing the Simpsons, I’d be beaten into submission and silence regarding the Simpsons issue much quicker. The thing is, I like the Simpsons fine. It’s fine, but people have this pathological obsession with it. It’s exactly like that Patrice O’Neal clip where he talks about how white people lose their marbles over Radiohead’s Creep.
When I say Breaking Bad is better than Girls, I don’t mean to sound like I’m disrespecting Lena Dunham. I think she’s very smart. And I suppose no one was really “doing this” before her, and I suppose I owe her, as she sort of paved the way for people like me – creative renegade types using MacOS to discuss their life online.
Matt says that what he really likes about HBO Girls is that Lena Dunham “basically has this like, selective self-awareness, and she plays with that – where it’s like she has these CRAAAAZY blind spots, and then it kind of makes you wonder, oh, do I have those blind spots too? Because hers are obnoxious, and you can tell that she thinks that she’s self aware, but then she has these glaring blind spots. I don’t know, I think it’s just a really good capturing of self-awareness and incorrect self-awareness in particular.”
I agree with Matt, and I think this might be part of why the show makes me feel uncomfortable. I have something to say about it, but I am afraid to say it because it is rude. But I am going to say it anyway.
Since Lena Dunham’s boyfriend in the show reminds me of my boyfriend, by default I sort of see myself as her when they do things like hugging or kissing. And this makes me feel insecure because I feel that Adam Driver is more good-looking than Lena Dunham. I think this might be a very cruel thing to say online, and I’m sorry. I think she’s probably talked about this sort of thing online, but it’s different when a stranger says it. Lena Dunham, I am sorry.
However, this insecurity directly relates to the selective self-awareness Matt was talking about. I have never really been made fun of for the way that I look, I have never been clinically overweight, I have never been denied opportunities based on the way that I look and I receive a relatively high amount of sexual attention. But I still think that every issue I encounter in my life arises from being “ugly” or “fat.” I think people only treat you bad because you’re ugly — because, for example, when a dog is extremely ugly, people love it less. My mother didn’t love my dog Corsa very much because she was funny-looking and she smelled awful. My mother preferred my other dog, Elvis, because he was big and plump and always wanted to sit in your lap because he was a numbskull who lacked the rich inner world that Corsa contained.
Of course, I never think that maybe I’m encountering issues due to my extremely flawed personality: needy, petulant, addictive, sensitive, jealous, double-standardizing, fearful, idealistic, naive, explosive. Well, I only started to take a good look at that stuff over the summer. I have made a lot of progress with sublimating my negative desires into positive ones and with the concept of change in general – specifically, that changing myself isn’t a sin against my “true nature,” and it’s not equivalent to designating my pre-changed self as wretched and doomed to hell. I have learned that when someone is frustrated with me or lashing out at me, it doesn’t mean they are getting really ticked off at me because of how ugly I am – they might just be getting ticked off at my bad behaviors. But still, when something bad happens, I tend to think I just need to buy a new shirt or lose ten pounds and everything will work itself out from there. But sometimes, buying a new shirt and losing ten pounds does solve a lot of my problems. So I don’t know, it’s all very nuanced. Life is sort of extremely nuanced. It’s not easy for me to accept that, because I used to be very addicted to things being one way or the other, and no in-betweens, because that made things much simpler and it seemed easier to protect myself that way. I was really averse to getting tricked by villains. But if a villain tricks you, well, you can just say, “Oh, okay, well that was very tricky of you.” And then you can just walk away if you don’t feel like being tricked anymore. You can just do that.
To Be Continued… (Because I am still on Season 3 of Girls and there are 6 seasons of Girls)