Nah. Some of his bits are curmudgeony, but he nailed it here.

Having a cellphone and using said cellphone in a dangerous manner are two separate issues.

He's quite right about texting in cars. His observations aren't exactly controversial (I think most people already know what he's saying), but he presents them in a very eloquent and amusing way. In this sense, yes, he's being very Carlinesque, and it's on the strength of this segment that I base my five-star rating. He earns it!

As for his observations about the psychological impact of sending texts to people, well, I'm less convinced by those. I was not aware that Louis CK is an expert on child development. I suppose he is an expert on being mean to people - after all, his entire career has been based around saying outrageous things that make other people feel bad about themselves - but he learned his professional skill-set in an age before digital communication, so I don't know if his expertise in being a dick actually qualifies him to speak on the matter of indirect communication teaching an entire generation of kids to be dicks.

At any rate, there is a lot more to cellphone ownership than dangerous phone habits. Not everyone spends their phone time surfing for porn on the highway or texting "You're fat" to fat people, not even every teenage kid. That's a question of personal responsibility and discipline and good sense and all sorts of other things, things which can't be easily generalized across heterogeneous populations like "teenagers". And what about all of the things that cellphones help teens do? Like keep in touch with friends, take photos to remember precious moments by, get directions, call the police, look up Stuckist artwork, or get GPS tracked by their parents? His major observations, one great, one perhaps less so, do not seem to be enough, in and of themselves, to justify the rather extreme "nuclear option" he proposes. His solution fails to take into account all of the benefits of cellphone ownership, and what's more, it does not address the depressingly likely consequence of depriving children of socially vital technology - the danger that his kid's may be "left behind" by the pace of the modern world and grow up to be technologically illiterate. (this could fill an entire tl;dr in itself)

But hey, at least now we know a couple children who can be safely kidnapped!




Now, I'm not saying he shouldn't do this to his kids. I've no interest in being an armchair parent, and frankly, how he deals with his daughters is none of my damn business. He knows his girls far better than I do; maybe they ARE too stupid to handle cellphones? I can concede that. But even IF his children are drooling imbeciles who will kill themselves and everyone they love should they get their webbed, snot-crusted mitten-fingers on an iPhone, I say it's unfair of him to extrapolate and present this no-phone rule as a reasonable course of action for the rest of us. I stand by my curmudgeonly assessment of his curmudgeonality.

Wow. You're taking this routine a bit too literally. I didn't see it as him saying "all cell phones are bad," I see it as him realizing that HE uses it as a crutch to fill boring or lonely moments, and how he wants his children to avoid using that crutch as long as possible.

I don't see him as saying all cellphones are bad, either. I do see him as saying cellphones are bad for children, and that the proper solution to their being bad for children is to deny his daughters access to them, both of which are unreasonable statements.

I thought it was really funny.

That too.

It is funny, but I think he should stick to jokes about kicking his kids in the face and sucking bags of dicks. This high concept stuff gets me going too much.

Don't want to shatter your world man, but I bet most of us are also on Facebook.

Yep, I'm that racist Tea Party Uncle you want to defriend but you can't because you don't want trouble at that next family get-together.

Oh, fine. But I don't want to know your real name or see pictures of you laughing.

I have a Facebook, though I haven't checked it in about eleven months. (too social for me, sends my anxiety through the roof everytime somebody tries to message me or post on my wall)

Don't worry, though! The name I used wasn't my real name, and the pictures in my profile are not me, they're actually a late 80s German pornstar wearing a silly construction worker outfit.

I had that Tea Partier, only it was an ex-church member, and said church member tried to complain to my dad, and it was the first time I've ever seen my dad stand up for my liberal queer tendencies.

It is a real good song, I love playing the bass line but my brother can't sing it so we never do it.

For me, it's "Deep Silent Complete" by Nightwish, "Loneliness is Worse" by Veruca Salt, and "Babyraper" by GWAR.

Plumb - In My Arms. It wasn't even a song I went looking for, it just popped up on Pandora one day. I was trying to find something like a female metal station and it devolved into stuff like Blackmore's Night and other weirdness instead, and then this damn song came on and I lost it. I fully understand that makes me a pussy. I will turn in my man card at the appropriate drop box at my earliest convenience.

Fourth act of La Bohème and Hutterite Mile by Sixteen Horsepower.

Thomas Dolby - "The Flat Earth"

instant waterworks, again for personal reasons