callahan, dane m.

[Deleted]

full name dane matthew callahan date of birth 08.10.92 home town los angeles, CA current city new york, NY education undergraduate occupation engineering student, cooper union ________________________________________ "WHETHER IT'S PARIS HILTON OR KIM KARDASHIAN OR WHOEVER, STUPIDITY IS CERTAINLY CELEBRATED. BEING A FUCKING IDIOT IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY IN THIS CULTURE BECAUSE YOU'RE REWARDED SIGNIFICANTLY... IT'S CELEBRATED. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE TO ME." - JON HAMM ________________________________________      If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that it's easier to get one thing out of the way before any other, and that's this. My dad's a porn director. My mom is a porn star. Neither have retired. I'll give you a couple minutes to let that sink in. As you can imagine, that's a fact I've had to deal with my whole life. From preschool when I had no idea what my parents did (they actually told me that they were spies, the filthy liars), to middle school when people were horrified by it and mortified for me, to high school when I got no end of "hey Callahan, watched your mom take 12 dicks last night, send her my compliments". I spent the first couple years at high school getting in fights over it, but by the time I was around sixteen I gave up. They weren't ashamed of it, my brothers weren't ashamed of it, and I guess I realized I had better just suck it up. ... Bad choice of words. Because it wasn't A Thing while we were at home. People assume we had this super laid back, massively libertarian up bringing, but my parents are pretty traditional. Strict curfew, regular groundings, the whole shebang. Not including when we were too young to understand, they never lied to us about what they did, and it's not like we were banned from watching any of it. We didn't fucking need to be. The few gifs and rogue links people have sent my way have scarred me for life, and they were mere glimpses into that world. It's not like people at college don't know, but most of the time they're too polite to mention it. I always get the drunken "what's it like watching your mom fuck strangers???" questions, but they're usually well meaning. People are fucking stupid, man. Everyone fucks. We're all animals. Still, it's not high up on my 'must watch' list. ________________________________________      Another thing people find weird about me is the fact I study engineering. Like that's fucking abnormal, right? Except I get it, I do. I have a seriously short attention span and engineering is a lot of contact hours, a lot of lab time, a lot of math. It all makes more sense when I explain that my goal is to become a rollercoaster designer. But it's not just that. I like engineering, I like applied physics and math. It's making shit happen. Everywhere you get people just sitting around talking about shit they're gonna do one day, instagramming inspirational quotes about love and life. But they're not fucking living life. This obsession with virtual reality is easily the most damaging thing in the world, because it's so fucking insidious. The only thing worse is the cult of celebrity. Why we these talentless assholes is so far beyond me it makes my head spin. I decided two things pretty early on in life: that I wasn't gonna coast it, and that I wasn't gonna stress about it either. I was gonna make shit happen, and when shit didn't happen exactly as I planned, then I'd just make that shit work. I'm gonna say something so cheesy it'll make you gag, but you engineer your own life. Your destiny is whatever you design it to be, and if you coast it, you only have yourself to blame when things aren't what you wanted. ________________________________________       So, remember all that shit I just said about virtual reality and how fame = decay of the soul? Yeah, it's probably worth mentioning that I have a successful YouTube channel. Judge me. I didn't set out to ~make it on YouTube~. Well, I sorta did, if you take that literally. I started off making videos about the tweaking I was doing with my guitar pedals, because I learned a few things in class that worked out. I mean those videos got a few thousand views, mostly from avid guitarists, and a few 4channers who'll watch just about anything. But I snapped one day and filmed this huge drunken rant about an ex girlfriend, and yeah, that went viral. It's definitely narcissism that keeps me uploading every couple weeks. I got this huge wave of subscribers after that rant, and then when it came out who my parents were, that brought about another wave. I don't know why people watch my videos because they really are fucking trivial. Me talking through my breakfast, for example. Me going to Trader Joe's with another Youtuber. Me pulling pranks on my brothers, those are better ones. My brothers pulling pranks on me. My commentary over episodes of Next Door to the Nathans... more on that later. I really don't get it, but it's way hard to stop. ________________________________________       The most common defence for laying into someone is that they set themselves up for it, isn't it? Especially celebrities. They invite the public into their lives, thrive on the attention, then complain about lack of privacy when it all goes bad. Which it always does. It's not like that's what I thought when I was making those Meet the Nathans videos. I just thought it was fucking funny. Here was the most vacuous family in America, presenting themselves to us for adoration 24/7... To be fair, it barely needed commentary. Not that that stopped me. I'd always have a guest co-narrating with me, and we'd mute bits and talk over, do impressions, reflect on the wisdom of the show... we were a bag of dicks is what I'm saying. So when Annie got in touch, you can imagine my surprise. And when Annie got in touch with praise, well, I thought she was fucked. Still, she came over and we shot an episode together. She was really fucking funny. I guess I knew it was all staged, but I didn't realize how much of it was genuine acting, and brutal editing. Because Annie wasn't this total airhead attention seeking slut. Actually, she is. But only because she's so well practised at pretending. She was funny and clever and sharp, really fucking sharp, I really liked hanging out with her. So that's how it started. We kept in touch... it all kicked off pretty quickly. Couple weeks after shooting she texted me to say she was gonna be in LA for a couple weeks, and did I want to hang out. Obviously I did. We got In-N-Out, got drunk on the beach, and I'd barely picked her up from the airport before I'd leaned in to kiss her for the first time. I got a lot of shit for that relationship from just about everyone - my mom, the press, my viewers - but I guess that's part of what kept me interested. That, and the fact that I thought she was different around me than she was around everyone else. I had an Annie no one knew, an Annie all to myself. But I wasn't great at conveying that. Between the constant criticism we both got, and between me being flakey and easily bored and the fact that maybe my jokes edged into cruelty sometimes, she got the idea that I didn't value her. Can't blame her. I used to tweet shit about her that I thought she'd find funny, not realizing that when it goes public it's not an in joke anymore. It was always clear how much I disrespected her "career". But it's on her too, because she got worse. She started believing her own publicity. The lip fillers and the endless selfies and the Twitter wars, I couldn't deal with any of that shit. So yeah, we drifted apart. I'd imagine she's only got worse since. ________________________________________ your name lex. play-by julian s. your most recent work no.