Salon.com > Dustin Rowles

I was raised like Paula Deen

Sat, 29 Jun 2013 17:00:00 +0000

Paula Deen is a racist, and like a lot of racists in the South, she honestly doesn’t believe she is a racist. In a Today show interview this morning with Matt Lauer, Paula Deen insists that she believes “all of God’s creatures should be treated equally” and that she “wasn’t raised” a racist. I believe she believes that, though it is obvious that she’s lying when she says that the only time she’s ever used the N-word was when a black man held her up at gunpoint.

“It’s just not a part of who we are,” Paula Deen asserts, which is also a clear lie, and rather than apologize for who she is and make an effort to change, Deen insists that she has never “in her 66 years” used that word but once, and that she’s offended by others’ use of it. Anyone who grew up in the South knows this to be a lie, and while many of the people who know she is lying are winking right along with her tear-streaked face, the rest of us know.

The Internet didn’t ruin “Arrested Development”!

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 16:00:00 +0000

People often blame the cable’s 24-hour news cycle for the downfall of “journalism,” but the Internet also runs on a 24-hour news cycle, and there are far more online outlets than there are cable news channels. Pop culture and television review sites have to fill our pages full of content each and every day, and we love to please the masses because it means masses of page views. That’s been no more apparent than in this short week’s coverage of season four of “Arrested Development,” in which we all have an opinion, and we all want to deliver that opinion before you’ve had a chance to make your own (we are just as much to blame, and though we waited until Tuesday, we wanted to be at least slightly ahead of the curve, and claim our own piece of ownership over the series).

Gary Busey auditions for reality show on Mars

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:13:00 +0000

On Jimmy Kimmel last night, Gary Busey showed his audition reel for Mars One, a reality show that it being planned by a non-profit organization in order to create a settlement on Mars (for real). It’s basically a one-way trip to Mars, where apparently viewers at home can watch the participant expire. In space.

Good times.

Anyway, Busey’s audition reel is hilarious and kooky and everything you’d expect from a Gary Busey audition reel for a one-way trip to Mars. “I don’t let anything get me down,” he says, “because I am positive. If you’re not positive, don’t go to Mars, because you’ll get trapped in your own eating habits. When you find yourself eating part of your calf muscle, you should not be on Mars.”

Wise. Insane. Busey.

Down with song-lyric fascists

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Mrs. Pajiba-hyphenate’s biggest pet peeve around the house is that it drives her absolutely bonkers if, while idly sing-songing about the house, I botch the lyrics to the tune I’m belting out. It’s an annoyance that she’s passed on to my 5 year old, whose forehead veins pop whenever I mangle a lyric. He insists that I sing it again until I identify the correct lyrics, and it’s only then that the vein will subside.

It’s a very serious problem in our home, and I suspect it’s a problem in other houses around America: Song-lyric fascists are ruining our fun. Because here’s the thing: Song lyrics are constructs. They are guidelines. Song lyrics, like the Constitution, are living, breathing words. We bend them to our will. They are not meant to be taken literally. In fact, song lyrics are often indecipherable junk written to accompany the melody and rarely to stand on their own. They are not poems. We do not derive meaning from their words; we experience the music. The mood. The feeling. The joy or the sadness. The lyrics glue the music together, but they are not fixed.

Dunham can’t write men

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:18:00 +0000

Nevermind that only 400,000 people in her target demo actually watch the show, “Girls,” Lena Dunham is the “voice of her generation,” which is something that people want to keep reminding us of. I’m skeptical about the notion of an entire generation being reduced to one voice — especially when that voice is of a woman from New York who dates rock stars — but I’m sure that there are many things about her particular way of life that Lena Dunham nails, and it’s probably fair to conclude that she is a decent representative of women whose fathers painted overtly sexual pop art and hangs out in multimillion-dollar Brooklyn walk-ups with the children of other famous people.

Does Tina Fey still have Sarah Palin down? You betcha!

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:18:00 +0000

On last night’s "Inside the Actors Studio," Tina Fey was generous enough to bring back her Sarah Palin impression, and given how absolutely fantastic she was, either she knew it was coming, or she’s very quick on her feet.

“What is your view on same-sex marriage?”

“Well, the Bible says it’s gross.”

My Valentine’s Day miracle

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:15:00 +0000

In September 2011, from the moment my wife and I found out that she was pregnant with monoamniotic twins, I made the decision not to talk about it online until — unless — we came out at the end of it with two healthy babies. The idea that I could one day share this story with the Pajiban community — whether you guys wanted to hear it or not — actually motivated me during much of what would be the most harrowing 22 weeks of our lives. It was an experience that’s more important for me to tell than for you guys to read, but since this particular occurrence is so rare, it may also be important story to put out on the Internet where I hope it may provide at lease some comfort to others going through the same ordeal.