Cliches & Brooklyn

This Recording, a blog which I know (and love deeply), posted this piece by former Gawker editor Emily Gould: In Which Emily Gould is Bored to Death With Brooklyn Cliches.

UGH.

Seriously, gag me, people.

First of all, let it be noted that all this Bored to Death shit is going to mark the beginning of the "Brooklyn Era" on TV and in film (I assume you guys know, Bored to Death is that new HBO show with Jason Schwartzman?). Brooklyn is hawt...and only getting hawter. NYC has had its moment with Sex and the City, Law & Order (x9), CSI, and the like, but the times, they are-a-changin. And now Brooklyn is like that mysterious cute girl/dude who starts midway through your Junior year of High School and sits next to you in homeroom--you don't know much about her/him, but (s)he's dressed a bit differently, and *MIGHT* have a tongue ring, and...well...you're intrigued. And, duh, you DEFINITELY want to fuck her/him.

So this Emily Gould piece is all about how she's soooo sick of all those typical Brooklyn cliches that she sees depicted, and written about and talked about constantly by "lazy" writers: "these people constitute but one skein -- well, maybe three or four skeins, and they're the most visible, they're some flashy kind of sparkle-thread -- in the incredibly diverse tapestry that makes up my neighborhood and my borough."

Of course, by "these people" she means: helicopter parents, Coop freaks, bratty, entitled kids, crazy dog ladies (like me), hiptards, etc. But I just dont' get it--I mean, wtf is the point? Are these the only types of people that live in Brooklyn? Duh, no. But why the fuck do we need to pretend that these aren't the most interesting people to talk about?

Cause you know what bores the fuck out of me? People who claim to be bored with [fill in the blank] XYZ cliche. B/c cliches are "soooo overplayed....and tired...and unoriginal," and blobbity blah blah.

Here's a newsflash: THOSE SAME FUCKING 'BORING CLICHES' THAT YOU CLAIM TO BE SO OVER ARE THE ONLY THINGS THAT ARE INTERESTING ABOUT YOUR ARTICLE. In fact, they are the only thing that got my ass to read your post in the first place (and I'm sure I'm not alone).

I mean, can't we just be honest about this? Cliches aren't boring, they're fun. They're the shit that people w-a-n-t to read about and talk about and see, and THAT'S why writers keep writing about them. It's not cause they are lazy, its cause they're smart and are in tune with what PEOPLE WANT. And, trust the formula: the moment people DON'T want to read about these "boring unoriginal" cliches anymore, bitches will stop writing about them tout de suite.

Sidenote: my two biggest laughs from the first two eps of Bored to Death? The dudes tripping over the strollers. Cliches? Definitely. But also just straight up fucking funny.

True story.