Joey Greco

Brian Chase

I really like Cheaters, the show that catches people cheating on their lovers. Each segment climaxes in some parking lot or rank 2BR apt — the sadness of wanting to fuck something better, of escaping one’s unrewarding life. There’s something stupid yet profound about being cheated on, the lung popping sadness, the imperative rebirth that one must go through. I bet host Joey Greco was cheated on once; nothing can mask such humiliated endurance and tempered indignation. Cheating is like parking in the handicap spot, it’s just bad, even in a our pluralistic world. I bet a lot of ladies have cheated on their man with Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase [see also this]. Sex is about timing, being 3/4 the way there in 3/4 time (I tried 6/8 once and pulled a muscle). Rock n’ roll will always be sexy, even when there’s a psycho lady in the way.

Schadenfreude is a German term meaning pleasure derived from the misfortune of others, like if you suddenly sneeze and inhale a clump of post-flu dried snot down your trachea, I will experience schadenfreude at your subsequent coughing fit. That is if you don’t die. Oh death, what an argument ender.

Proust at his deathbed (1922)

Adrien Brody in "The Pianist" (2002)

Schadenfreude ends where empathy is supposed to begin. It’s a fine line knowing what’s funny and what’s wrong. The be all and end all on things you can’t joke about is the holocaust. Every year there’s a movie about the holocaust and my mom always complains they never make a movie about the Nanking massacre. I tell her “that’s only 300,000 dead, the holocaust wins.”

God I hope that didn’t sound like a joke. I really liked that scene in The Pianist where the Nazi is moved by the piano tunes of Szpilman. Some say it’s cheesy or too sympathetic towards the Nazi, like how he brings a sandwich to Szpilman. I like how it’s morally complicated. Despite the Proustian death-face of Brody’s portrayal, Szpilman survived the war and lived until 2000 from natural causes. That he, that we, eventually die is testament to the greatest schadenfreude of all: God’s. Don’t worry, I’m a non-practicing atheist, which means when the Rapture cometh, I be praying.