Saw that description on netflix and it made me laugh, and I’m still processing why.



It’s like a zen koan. It sounds so dumb! Why? Is it because B&B’s dialog is so stupid, when you try to summarize it, it sounds even stupider? Like trying to describe the oft mundane plot of Seinfeld, “It’s a show about nothing.” Or when somebody asks me what I did today, and it doesn’t make a great narrative, I say, “Ah nothing much.”



And that line fascinates me because it’s also a description of so many conversations I have. We’re all collectively processing the news, pop culture, whatever thing comes down the reality tunnel into the perceptual field. Most processing happens on the first circuit of consciousness. Either you eat it (cool) or you run away from it (sucks). Approach or avoid. We add a lot of data to that decision but at its core it’s very basic.



I heard that the kernel of inspiration for Beavis and Butthead was a moment when Mike Judge was eating lunch in a mall food court, and he was listening to these two teenagers talking, and they sounded so stupid, so utterly moronic, that he had to draw a cartoon about them—-and the rest is history.

And meanwhile, I’m sitting in a living room having a spirited debate about Obama Drones Syria NSA etc etc etc, and what do I have to say about it? If you boil it down, I’m either saying “that’s cool” or “that sucks”.

And in parallel

A student once asked his teacher, “Master, what is enlightenment?”

The master replied, “When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep.”







it sounds really dumb, and yet— does it need to be complicated?









IN CONCLUSION

maybe beavis and butthead (read: us)

are enlightened masters (read: cool)

but maybe (hang on)

they are shitheads (read: sucks)