I am reading two books these days. The first is a complete collection of George Orwells´s
Essays from 1928 - 1949. Twenty years of the WWII era equivalent of blogging. During that time Orwell was a soldier in Burma, then a hobo and then a revolutionary and then a writer. The topics range from an essay on the Spanish Civil War to reviews of books of Philosophy to an expose of homeless shelters in England. The second book is entitled
I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. It is a collection of anecdotes from 1998 to around 2005, written by Tucker Max, whose claim to fame is a dating application, which is technically a multiple choice test with questions and answers such as
How much does it take to get you drunk?
The smell of alcohol
A few beers
A few glasses of wine
A six-pack
A six-pack of Ripple
I can out drink a Wahoo
I can out drink an Irish Catholic
Ever heard of Motley Crue? I taught them how to party.
"My parent’s won’t let me use scissors.”
When you´ve stopped laughing let me point out that the last line is a quote from Ralph Wiggum on the Simpsons. And get this, ALL the responses include a quote from Ralph. How funny is that? If you, the applicant, guess this correctly then you win something from Tucker. I know, this is unbelieveably generous so I want everyone to have this opportunity by directing you to Tucker´s site, but not without putting up a challenge of my own. Can you guess the name of his website? Anyone? Well, maybe you´ll have a better idea if you continue to read.
Now, my purpose for this article is to compare and contrast these two authors and their work. If I accidentally extoll the virtues of Orwell and thoroughly expose Max for a fraud and philistine then that may be considered an added bonus. I don´t pretend to be unbiased. Believe me, my scoring card already has Orwell ahead by five rounds and the first bell hasn´t even rung. But that´s me. That´s my prejudice and I beg you to overlook it and form your own opinions of the scum turtle known as Tucker Max and the literary luminary knows as George Orwell. Don´t let me influence your final decision at all. Just because Tucker describes his favorite hobby as, "I like to fart in the bathtub and turn around and bite the bubbles." does not mean he can´t be taken seriously. No, on the contrary, it is in times like these that George Orwell chose to examine the common cultural product as a reflection of the generation as a whole. In Orwell´s time he found a violent battle between capitalists and socialists, fascists and democrats, colony and colonizer, a battle that he himself played a major role in with his books and essays. Tucker on the other hand has this to say about his life goal, "To be a celebrity that gets paid to get drunk, act like an asshole, and get drunk some more." Amazingly, this lofty dream is coming true for Mr. Max.
Now let´s take a closer look at these two authors and their respective work:
"No civilized person would wish for an instant to imitate the gypsies´habits, but that is not the same as saying that one would like to see them disappear. Existing in the teeth of a civiization which disapproves of them, they are a heartening reminder of the largeness of the earth and the power of human obstinacy."
So writes Orwell in his 1938 review of
Gypsies, by Martin Block, a book concerning the history and status of Eurpoean Gypsies. This is a random selection and Tucker Max deserves the same treatment. After all, Max also exists in the teeth of a civilization which disapproves of him as the following sample will attest to.
"As I sat there on the uncomfortably warm toilet seat, unwiped, smelling my own shit, my ass sweating and falling asleep at the same time - about to come because she was so good [at fellatio] she could bring me to orgasm in a coma-I gave up."
So writes Max in his recollection of an October 2001 romantic affair. October 2001? Didn´t something important happen just a month earlier? What was it? I can´t remember. It´s on the tip of my tongue. Oh, well, nothing important, I´m sure. Nothing that would eclipse important confessions such as these...
"No matter what I did, she wanted more. If I spanked her, she wanted to be spanked until her ass was raw. If I called her a "bitch" during sex, she wanted to be called a "whore." If I called her a "whore," she wanted to be called a "filthy cunt whore." I´m literally a professional at humiliating and debasing people, but this girl was absorbing my entire repertoire and then coming back and asking for seconds."
Would his lover finish the blowjob before or after he finished taking a shit? Would she draw the line or would Tucker Max run out of ways to heighten their sex play? My mind is ablaze with curiosity and thankfully Max has the wisdom to remember and record it. I have scoured Orwell´s collected essays and am saddened to find nary a description of his sex life outside of a recollection of being humiliated by his schoolmarm because masturbation was considered debasing. Masturbation for a teenage boy? Debasing? And giving a blowjob a´la defecation is now a rite of passage. Oh, how fate must laugh at the whims of man. One wonders, was Orwell a prude? A fag? It´s hard to say since his writing focuses on Mussolini, Hitler, Tolstoy and other unentertaining topics. What an asshole, right? Didn´t they have filthy cunt whores to write about in 1930?
I do not know if they serve beer in hell. But I do know what books will stock the shelves of Hell´s library. The seeds of
1984 and
Animal Farm are clearly in Orwell´s early essays, but if there is a seed of anything in Max´s book it is of a amateur animation clip involving Ralph Wiggum and a vibrator. Or maybe Ralph will reenact the toilet blowjob with...get this...Lucy from the Peanuts series. How funny would that be? They don´t exist in the same animated universe, see, so it would be even funnier to combine them in a pornographic situation. I can just picture it and it makes me laugh boistrously. Just imagine the hilarious situations you can put two animated characters in. You can actually
make them fuck and fellate each other. Think about that! It´s like an unlimited number of possibilities and one day it will be Tucker Max´s responsiblitiy to highlight them all. He will, afterall, need to have something to watch in Hell.
Of course the argument can be made that Tucker does not claim to be a writer of substance. But, and this is the truth, neither did Goerge Orwell. They were both educated individuals who decided to write their thoughts and experiences down for their own enjoyment...not for commercial success. While George Orwell fought in the Spanish Revolution Tucker Max casually insults people of French persuasion because the French surrendered to Germany some 70 years ago. This is as close to a political cause as Tucker Max allows himself to support, and it is mostly for the abuse of a stranger that he does so.
Tucker Max and his friends have their closest historical associates in Alex and the droogs from Clockwork Orange. They are sociopathic, remorseless, unrepentant, amoral, ID-based entities. Call me insecure, call me overly sensitive. No matter, this Tucker individual is a loathsome parasite. His wittier-than-thou manner, maintained while telling stories involving jokes about fat people and clumsy anal sex, is indescribably replusive. George Orwell had no resources to rely on and he produced two of the most referenced dystopian novels of all time. Max simply lives in a dystopia and writes just clear enough to be understood. If he had a nickle for every time he ended up laying on the ground laughing until shit started coming out of his asshole then he would be a rich man. He does have game, that can´t be denied. He can charm the panties off a horny hooker...and manage to get a blowjob
without paying for it. The beautiful women he sleeps with (why would he lie about that) are not forced to fuck him. No, they go willingly along and probably consider a one night stand with Max as a test of their own limits, a reminder of why their real boyfriend is so trustworthy. In one of his more revealing anecdotes a girl tells him she has genital warts...and he immediately leaves her. I can only think that this was one of the rare occassions when getting genital warts turns out to be a good thing. Yes, Max represents that unattainable ID mentality we all wish we could cultivate until this stupid thing called "our conscience" gets in the way. Not everyone can have distant and emotionally unavailable mothers like Max. Some of us got brought up thinking we are responsible for our own actions
even when drunk. Max is one of those common rat boy types who compartmentalizes so effectively that his behavior when drunk or when recovering from a drunk does not go down on his permanent record. One is tempted to lecture him about the harm he is doing to his body and to the emotions of those he exploits. But what would George Orwell say if he came across Max´s book? I believe Orwell would recognize that Max already knows everything you are going to tell him, that he is in fact an imperfect sociopath because he can only reduce his consience to a whisper with the help of alcohol. A true sociopath is a menace even when completely sober. That´s the difference with "party in a can" personalities like Max´s and real monsters; Max knows he is a fake and the real monsters obey the voices in their heads. Yes, failure to a person like Max is not turning his back on a career in law (AKA filing state paperwork). Rather, failure is knowing you can´t do it without a bottle in your hand. He can´t be a real person, albeit a sociopath, without being drunk. That knowledge kills him and forces him to reach for the bottle and as soon as he is drunk and bulletproof he feels alive. "Record what I´m about to say, because it´s going to be very funny." And to a drunk frat boy who also laughs at movies like Clerks and Clerks II, he probably is very funny.
One can not admire or respect Tucker Max but one must give him credit for recognizing the swine element in society and realizing it fit his swine personality perfectly. One can not ignore an opportunity when it presents itself and Max jumped on this one like a Miami model jumps on a pile of Meth. To turn his back on such an opportunity would have meant a lifetime of inadequacy issues and diet soda. Enter Mr. Tequila and a star is born.
If you still haven´t guessed the address for Tucker Max´s website just remember that Tucker Max must log in to his editing interface while shitfaced so it should be easy for Tucker Max to remember with not a lot of creativity or indirect language to struggle with. The words should just roll off of Tucker Max´s tongue. If you still don´t know what the address is just remember the anecdote Max tells of dancing with a beautiful stranger who later turns out to be himself...in a mirror. That should give you idea of Tucker Max´s perfect mate even though we all know he would only break up with himself after two dates because he was simply trying too hard to be clever. When people try too hard to laugh then it either means they aren´t funny or they are drowning out the doubts they hear with forced chuckles.
If you still can´t guess the address for Tucker Max´s site then it means you aren´t smart enough and wouldn´t get his irony anyway. Too bad for you, you filthy cunt whore.
