Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare

I have to say, one of my biggest pet peeves in life is (are?) fake people. So much in fact, that I avoid them at any cost necessary. What’s even better (worse?), is that my culture seems to breed them. Now before you get all “geeze Sam, why do you hate your culture so much?” let me preface this blog entry by saying that the things I dislike about my culture are usually not unique to my culture; but since it’s the one culture I know best, it becomes the culprit of my frustration.

To continue.

Egyptians seem to be the masters of “maintaining face.” In other words, pretending like everything’s ok when it’s not; acting like they like you when they don’t; offering things they don’t want to give; and avoiding topics they don’t want to deal with. And now that I’m at the ripe old age to realize this, it drives me crazy.

Matt and Kim are a Brooklynite duo that decided they were just going to make music that was fun. Music that basically started out in small, basement parties and ended up on Bacardi commercials. I like to think of them as the Hipster White Stripes…who smile a whole lot more. Matt and Kim have a song off their new album called Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare (the song, not the album). The song opens up with Matt singing (and playing his keyboard), “Show me the side streets in your life.” Then the hipster madness resounds and the beat drops like it weighs a ton; at which point, Kim goes at it on the drums. Ahhh, just describing it makes me want to listen to the song on repeat. But that lyric, that opening line is what got me thinking.

I want people to show me the side streets in their life. I want them to show me the crap they have to deal with, the character flaws they try to hide, the fact that they’re not perfect and they don’t have it all together. And I want to reciprocate that with my own weaknesses. When I meet someone, and I really want to get to know them beyond the standard familiarity, I want to know what they’re like when no one’s looking. Because the side of us that no one wants to show off is the side that makes us who we are. And yeah, there’s a lot of guck and crap that may not be pretty, and yeah no one wants to look bad; but if we could all admit that we suck as humans and are desperately working to be better people, we might be happier. At least we’d all be honest, and at least no one would suffer from false perceptions.

Hi, I’m Samantha. I suck at life, but I’m getting better at it.