The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: wombat on March 07, 2008, 08:14:19 pm
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http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=03072008 (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=03072008)
I am one of those who likes Molly, but Beef obviously knows more about dogs, their breeds and cocoa-based products.
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What an incredibly odd Achewood (and that's saying something). Nothing says "Jesus is a dog with a cape who has been eating chocolate" like FLOWCHARTS!
Also, I like the drawing of Beef and Molly as neo-rockabilly hipsters.
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What an incredibly odd Achewood (and that's saying something). Nothing says "Jesus is a dog with a cape who has been eating chocolate" like FLOWCHARTS!
Also, I like the drawing of Beef and Molly as neo-rockabilly hipsters.
Wait, its hip to be an angry blue collar man stuck in his Circumstances? I... I know a lot of really hip people.
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I feel that this is quality.
A+, would read again.
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This was great. Funny, unconventional storytelling. I like how circumstantial it is - the other flowcharts seemed to be more representative of typical decision-making processes, whereas this is more specific in both the artwork and the story being told.
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This is so full of awesome. At first I was all excited about a comic with Molly (new, improved hair sheen!) but the part about Beef getting to be an angry blue-collar father for winning a bet... that was chilling for me. I can see how that is a reward for him... but should Molly indulge this? What was the bet?
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This is so full of awesome. At first I was all excited about a comic with Molly (new, improved hair sheen!) but the part about Beef getting to be an angry blue-collar father for winning a bet... that was chilling for me. I can see how that is a reward for him... but should Molly indulge this? What was the bet?
I do not think we will know the bet.
But between becoming Groucho Marx (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=02222008), more Great Moments in Cinema (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=02072008) and this sad, sad man (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=02052008) I would say Beef is on a roleplaying kick at the moment. I find it pleasant.
Also, the correct title to today's thread is "Dammit woman". This is not to disparage you, wombat. You are hell of awesome.
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Correct title: The Dog Who Had Some Serious Religion Chops
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Those would otherwise have been good choices but you can't expect a person to pass up the chance to use the word 'basenji' in a thread title.
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I agree that the thread title should properly be "Dammit Woman," but I give Womb@ some leeway with the understanding that she simply cannot resist referencing small mammals whenever possible.
Also, this sounds remarkably like an afternoon at Dunston Manor.
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After watching Torchwood last night, Molly looks more and more like Gwen in this picture.
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Pretty good - I love the idea of Beef winning a bet and getting to be blue-collar, but I think this would have been funnier as just a regular strip. What good is a flowchart if it only flows one way? Molly above all seems like the type who could have fifteen different options for "Should I get out of bed?"
Is Coors the undisputed heavyweight champ of the auto service technician at the Quik Lube?
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the mention of an E#m chord makes my head hurt.
</musictheorynerd>
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the mention of an E#m chord makes my head hurt.
</musictheorynerd>
It's very similar to an Fm.
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Wait, its hip to be an angry blue collar man stuck in his Circumstances?
No... but it is supremely hip to ironically pose as one.
Hence all those douchebag blowdried actors and singer with the trucker hats a few years back.
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I love the alt text; not only is it clever, but it's also true. I don't think I've ever encountered a Golden Retriever who didn't strike me as profoundly brain-damaged.
Anyway... this is a weird strip, but to me it's more genius than weird-out. C'est la vie.
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"It's very similar to an Fm."
Sounds the same to our ear, yes, and most people who play by ear or don't have theory training would hear that chord (or play it on their guitar) and call it an F minor. Hell, that's what I'd call it if I was showing someone else what chord to play. But in the key of C# (for instance), it would be improper to call it Fm -- you would call it E# minor, and you'd spell the chord as: E#, G#, B#, not F, Ab, C, as you would spell an Fm. Why? Well, I'm glad that you asked, and to be honest, a bit surprised that you even care, but here it is: It's because the diatonic major scale in the key of C# would be: C#, D#, E#, F#, G#, A#, and B#. Yep, 7 sharps, and you'd put all seven of them on the staff in your key signature when you're writing something out in C#. Otherwise, you'd run the risk of confusing someone who was attempting to sight-read the piece (by calling notes and chords by their enharmonic names, i.e. E# = "F", or B# = "C").
It'll still be kinda confusing to them, though -- that's a lot of sharps to keep track of on the page and on your axe. They'd probably be happier if you had written your piece out in Db, which would sound exactly the same, but have fewer accidentals to keep track of (Db has 5 flats, as opposed to C#'s 7 sharps). In Db, it would be legal and proper to call that chord Fm. BTW, the key of F# (six sharps) also contains the controversial and contentious E#.
Having said that, I'm guessing that Onstad referred to it as E#m just because he thought its oddness made for a mildly funny musical joke. Or maybe he just likes the damn key of C#.
Great strip, BTW. So very, very much to recommend about it.
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"It's very similar to an Fm."
Sounds the same to our ear, yes, and most people who play by ear or don't have theory training would hear that chord (or play it on their guitar) and call it an F minor. Hell, that's what I'd call it if I was showing someone else what chord to play. But in the key of C# (for instance), it would be improper to call it Fm -- you would call it E# minor, and you'd spell the chord as: E#, G#, B#, not F, Ab, C, as you would spell an Fm. Why? Well, I'm glad that you asked, and to be honest, a bit surprised that you even care, but here it is: It's because the diatonic major scale in the key of C# would be: C#, D#, E#, F#, G#, A#, and B#. Yep, 7 sharps, and you'd put all seven of them on the staff in your key signature when you're writing something out in C#. Otherwise, you'd run the risk of confusing someone who was attempting to sight-read the piece (by calling notes and chords by their enharmonic names, i.e. E# = "F", or B# = "C").
It'll still be kinda confusing to them, though -- that's a lot of sharps to keep track of on the page and on your axe. They'd probably be happier if you had written your piece out in Db, which would sound exactly the same, but have fewer accidentals to keep track of (Db has 5 flats, as opposed to C#'s 7 sharps). In Db, it would be legal and proper to call that chord Fm. BTW, the key of F# (six sharps) also contains the controversial and contentious E#.
Having said that, I'm guessing that Onstad referred to it as E#m just because he thought its oddness made for a mildly funny musical joke. Or maybe he just likes the damn key of C#.
Great strip, BTW. So very, very much to recommend about it.
that, and technically an Fm and an E#m should sound different, at least if played in pure intonation. ah well, someday I'll learn to turn that sort of thing off and just enjoy the damn strips.
I dunno about Onstad's musical knowledge ... he did some pretty interesting/possibly stolen stuff with Ray's piano playing and (I think) what Téodor wrote for Click-Bot's funeral, but I also remember a strip or two involving more or less random musical notation. so ...
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No... but it is supremely hip to ironically pose as one.
Hence all those douchebag blowdried actors and singer with the trucker hats a few years back.
So, in other words, it is supremely un-hip to pose as one? Or are we in such fast cycles now that doing something hip people were doing 3 years ago is retro?
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Well, you need to remember:
Being hip is about the worst thing you can be in the world. Being hip is like not only having leperosy but also suffering from the delusion that leperosy is awesome and everyone likes being around a leper.
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damn dude, I have to disagree with you there.
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What's so good about being hip?
Even if you're hip because you're genuinely into the currently hip stuff, everyone else is glomming onto your shit and... eventually, you get addicted to the feeling of being hip and start liking the idea of being hip so much that you start chasing after the hipness and... everything goes to shit.
Nah, best to stay as unaware of what is and is not hip as possible.
It's the only way it doesn't end up ruining whatever you're into.
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I don't know. I still have a feeling like these Hipsters everyone talks about are my friends, except the people like my friends that I don't know. The people my friends call hipsters are all really just kids who are English majors that are really into being Intellectual, which is not really what Hip means to me.
Really, the straw that broke my back or whatever was seeing this girl I dislike walk into a party that was all of my friends and start ripping it apart as "a bunch of drunk hipster douchebags" &c. That is the point where I decided that I hate the whole Hipster concept.
Also, based on her characterization, being a hipster means assiduously trying to avoid being classified as a hipster, and really liking rad music and art and stuff.
I don't know. I think I haven't lived anyplace with real "hipsters" either. When I see people wearing weird clothes, I assume that they are into things I like and will be interesting.
Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane were hip, and will be hip forever. That's all I need to tell me that you are wrong.
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No no no, y'see... Coltrane and Davis were cool. Hendrix was awesome. Charlie Parker was a'ight.
MTV's Jesse Camp was "hip". Ashton Knudsen was "hip". Dave Matthews was "hip" and so was Bruce Springsteen. Paris Hilton and, like, Bo Bice were "hip". Pauly Shore was "hip". In the late 1800s, seances were "hip". Phish was "hip".
I... maybe this is something that only years of experience can distinguish, I dunno.
Hip is an ephemeral state of "in-ness" created not by the intrinsic radness of the item in question but by the fickle whims of the current zeitgeist and the often ironic decisions of whoever the tastemakers are at that moment.
Guns N Roses were awesome, Bon Jovi was hip.
I cannot explain it any more clearly than that.
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Guns N Roses were awesome, Bon Jovi was hip.
I cannot explain it any more clearly than that.
I have given you a can. I can't explain it any better than THAT.
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In the late 1800s, seances were "hip". Phish was "hip".
Huh. I didn't know Phish had been around that long.
But seriously folks. Being hip or a hipster or whatever the fuck you want to call it is a great thing to be -- at a certain point in your life. Trying not to be patronizing here, but when you're in college is when you ought to be up on all the cultural latest and greatest. Over-emphasize that past a certain point and well...
Also, it's important to draw the line between hipness and douchebaggery. It's never wrong to like good things. I will enjoy Theolonius Monk and Bob Dylan until the day I die. The decline into douchebaggery occurs when we wear our vast cultural knowledge on our sleeves and believe our taste makes us superior creatures.
Finally, just because some insecure asshole at a party insults you doesn't make it true.
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Oh, I'm not saying that this person at this party was right about your friends.
Your friends probably aren't hipsters, they're probably just people who like some things passionately.
I'm just saying... that which passes, passes like clouds, you know.
To get too knowledgable/to get too worked up about whisps in the sky that'll be there for five minutes... just because there are people running around, saying that you're supposed to be because oh man those clouds are so "now"...
Unhealthy path.
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The decline into douchebaggery occurs when we wear our vast cultural knowledge on our sleeves and believe our taste makes us superior creatures.
It's a crying shame that that sentence is too long to make a good tshirt.
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Why not just make a t-shirt with the words "VAST CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE" on the sleeve, and wear it ironically?
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The idea that Phish could ever have been hip is just... that is just a lie. Phish were popular maybe, but that is not at all the same as hip. Phish are too dorky to ever have been hip. Phish are for yuppies. Jazz musicians are the essence of hip, and to suggest otherwise is just silly. They goddamn invented hip.
The thing that really gets me is that... among my friends, at all the schools they've gone to, it's like a Hip Witch Hunt. Between music blogs and pitchfork and whatever else, everyone is incredibly aware of what is Hip, and they feel like they have to go to extraordinary links to prove that they are NOT HIP. And that is some straight-up bullshit. You get these people being all "yeah, I mean, I really like Vampire Weekend. They're a rad band. But, you know, I'm just waiting for the inevitable hipster backlash, hahahaha."
I've met lots of people who like things that are Hip, but never someone who wouldn't be incredibly offended to be called a hipster. That, quite frankly, is ridiculous.
I mean, when people at the radio station ask what I play on my show, and I say "indie rock," they give me Looks. What the hell is that? There's like a competition, it feels like, among the DJs to prove how UnHip they are. "I really like Michael Jackson! *scrutinizes my face to see any hint that I don't like Michael Jackson, so the kid can call me an elitist hipster*" Any time we penalize someone for playing, you know, Tori Amos or whatever, we get accused of being Elitists. And it's like... Yeah. We're a college radio station.
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I've met lots of people who like things that are Hip, but never someone who wouldn't be incredibly offended to be called a hipster. That, quite frankly, is ridiculous.
I mean, when people at the radio station ask what I play on my show, and I say "indie rock," they give me Looks. What the hell is that? There's like a competition, it feels like, among the DJs to prove how UnHip they are. "I really like Michael Jackson! *scrutinizes my face to see any hint that I don't like Michael Jackson, so the kid can call me an elitist hipster*" Any time we penalize someone for playing, you know, Tori Amos or whatever, we get accused of being Elitists. And it's like... Yeah. We're a college radio station.
The way you describe it, you guys spend more time scrutinizing your playlist than Clear Channel.
I'm not sure if I mean that as a compliment or not. You know as well as I do how bad the radio is here, and CC is a part of that.
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no, there are only like 3 rules. You have to play at least 3 new releases an hour (and this is waived if you have a show in a genre that we don't have "New Releases" for), you can't play the same artist 2 weeks in a row, and nothing "too mainstream." We are pretty lenient with the last one, until some kid plays 3 Dave Matthews Band songs in a row.
Based on talking to kids at other stations, we are pretty damn lenient.
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Guns N Roses were awesome, Bon Jovi was hip.
It's probably that I am too young to appreciate the distinction, but I'm still trying to get my head around this one.
Inev: Fuck people who are going to judge you based on what you like and fuck people who spoil their own enjoyment by worrying what other people think.
Life Is Rad.
That's all you need to remember.
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yeah, again, there is no way in hell Bon Jovi was hip.
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I could see where you might think that, 'Nev.
I, myself, am barely old enough to remember when Bon Jovi was hip and I am nearly ten years older than you are but... there was a time, man.
There were times when people thought lead would become gold if you prayed over it properly, there were times when people thought the stars were but pinpricks in the sheet God threw over the sky to make the night and... Jesus Christ help us... there was a time when Bon Jovi was hip.
It needs to be remembered: it is not that mankind has physically evolved in any meaningful way in the last hundred thousand years, it is merely that we have accumulated knowledge and managed to pass most of it down smoothly from generation to generation...
Break that chain of intellectual custody and there is nothing different between us and cavemen.
It is only that unbroken chain of experience that has us not throwing rocks at elk.
It is only that unbroken chain of experience that has allowed us to realize that Bon Jovi is transcendently awful.
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Well what I meant was: Guns N Roses were awesome?
Really?
*hides*
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Well what I meant was: Guns N Roses were awesome?
Really?
*hides*
OH NO YOU DI'NT!
Appetite For Destruction was the slap in face we needed, in part, to realize just how awful Bon Jovi was.
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No, see, again. To me something that mainstream-popular could not possibly have been "hip." If every goddamn kid on the block has a Bon Jovi cassette, that is not hip. that is the opposite of hip. Bon Jovi could never be hip the way bebop or beat poetry were hip. he just... does not fit into the way I understand that word.
the people you call "hipsters" today would not have liked Bon Jovi if they were in the 80's, but they definitely would have liked Bebop, or at least pretended to like it, if they were in the 50's.
Also, I am not big on Guns and Roses, but that is because of my own appetites (which I guess are not for destruction).
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Guns N Roses awesome? Whatever. Bon Jovi anything but smarmy? Yeah, right.
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I...
...I...
......I like Bon Jovi.
And John Mellencamp.
There. I said it.
*hides*
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Sounds like there are battling definitions of what "hip" is. Is hip mainstream-cool, or is it counter-culture cool? At one point, I thought the latter. Now, though, I would think the former.
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The trick is that (especially today) the turn around time for counter-cool being aped by the mainstream is fuck*ng quick. To me hip is the person who liked it before you did. There isn't a judgement inherent in this, but there are certainly plenty of people who like to be hip for elitist value.
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There was a scene on Knight Rider, where Michael Knight was driving across the desert, and he was signing along to "When the walls come tumblin' down".
To a young me, he was never more badass than at that moment.
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Pedro's impression of Mellencamp:
"Small town small town, small town.
Small town small town, small town.
Small town small town small town, small town small town!
Small town, small town, small town."
I think I just like his music because he seems like a nice person. Kind of like Scott Bakula (although there's no denying his actual talent). The Coug, Bakula, and Tom Hanks -- if I were having a bad day, those are the three famous people I'd most want to sit on my couch and eat ice cream straight from the carton with.
Also, my mom has the biggest crush in the universe on Jon Bon Jovi.
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I like John Mellencamp a lot.
Some most damn near all of his early stuff was "Ain't it great to live this sucky beautiful life in this nowhere slice of awful heaven?" but the later stuff was a little bit different. There are no "Little Pink Houses" on Mr. Happy Go Lucky, for instance.
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John Mellencamp is a rich man's Bruce Springsteen, intended for the discerning gentleman.
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No no, Bruce Springsteen is the rich man's Bruce Springsteen.
John Cougar Mellancamp Finkelstein Finkelstein Finkelstein Mallowmar Shapoopie Pilkington is the guy who really cares which brand of truck he drives's Bruce Springsteen.
Bob Dylan is the college student who just discovered that the sixties happened's Bruce Springsteen.
Billy Joel is the soccer mom's Bruce Springsteen.
Bon Jovi is the woman in her thirties who camp-follows minor league baseball players's Bruce Springsteen.
One Springsteen, many faces, to paraphrase the devil in "The Last Temptation of Christ".
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Bruce Springsteen is my Bruce Springsteen. And I ate my share of government cheese growing up.
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Bob Dylan is the college student who just discovered that the sixties happened's Bruce Springsteen.
wait, what??
this seems... utterly nonsensical.
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Same con, different generation. Good lookin' dude who can't really sing puts on some dusty blue-jeans, strings together some really simplistic "concern" into lyrics and laughs all the way to the bank. One Dylan, many faces.
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strings together some really simplistic "concern" into lyrics
Have you ever actually listened to any Bob Dylan?
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well, yeah, but saying that Bob Dylan is someone's springsteen... is just weird.
I've never thought of Bob Dylan as that kind of manipulator, but, ok.
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There is an old National Lampoon song that... explains this perfectly... two, actually.
"Out Behind The Barn" on the Lemmings album savages Dylan for what he was... a charmer selling whatever it was he thought the people wanted to buy at the moment... poetry, revolution, electric guitars... and when the going got tough, he jumped out to find Jesus and write country music and laugh at all the suckers.
But "What Were You Expecting, Rock and Roll?" off the National Lampoon White Album... really nails it for Springsteen, for Dylan, for Mellancamp, for all of 'em, for that blue-eyed fake-working-class fake-ass fake-bar-band fake-soul fake-country-rock bullshit but...
I can't find the lyrics online to use them to make my point.
Fuck. I'll try to dig out the CD and transcribe when I'm not already falling asleep from an eccessive dose of diphenhydramine.
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So what, JL? You've dumped Michael J. Fox from the pantheon?
(The only one I can't vouch for is Bakula)
O! I am shamed by my omission.
Yes, of course Michael J (in my private thoughts he lets me call him Michael J) -- you should be there too.
Although that is more of a crush, and JMC, Bakula, and Hanks are more like guy-buddies.
Okay, I have a crush on Bakula, too. He does his own stunts, people! That is heck of sexy!
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Bruce Springsteen is my Bruce Springsteen.
Mine too. And note: He does not have blue eyes.
I'm going to leave it at that.
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"Out Behind The Barn" on the Lemmings album savages Dylan for what he was... a charmer selling whatever it was he thought the people wanted to buy at the moment... poetry, revolution, electric guitars... and when the going got tough, he jumped out to find Jesus and write country music and laugh at all the suckers.
Hmm, the legend has him writing songs for Joan Baez, who encourages him to get out and perform them himself.
Mine too. And note: He does not have blue eyes.
I'm going to leave it at that.
Do the drapes match the carpet?
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Didn't I hear on the radio this morning that the artist formerly known as John Cougar was just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? (I almost wrote 'indicted')
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Okay, a dude transcribed the relevant part of "What Were You Expecting, Rock and Roll?" as best he could... and it follows:
***
One! Two! Three! Four!
I've got streetwise lyrics
got a (unintelligible) t-shirt
got an attitude
an agent
got some blue suede shoes
I'm electric
I'm eclectic
got an IBM selectric
I'm a close approximation
of an uptown imitation
of a white-boy simulation
of the black man's blues
and I'm dealing with the devil
for a special tone of black-man suit
oooooh!
but what were you expecting
what were you expecting
what were you expecting, rock and roll?
***
And... that's what all of the above sound like to me. Hacky insincere attempts to approximate the idea of middle-Americanness and "I am so deep! I am so deep! Everybody loves me, I am so deep!" preciousness that makes me wanna smack 'em all in their respective grills.
That's why Axl Rose is so great... he is too screwed in the head to be anything other than a primal scream from the confused and pissed-off fifteen year old inside of all of us. There's a purity to it. I've never bought that Dylan was doing anything other than trying to be a star and then, later in his career, trying to be impish. Springsteen, only the first part.
See also: Lennon's savage rebuttal to Dylan's simpering "Serve Somebody" with "Serve Yourself" and... The Travelling Wilburies' (including Dylan himself!) wonderful deconstruction of the crass insincerity of Springsteen's calculated "Jersey shore noir" bullcrap in "Tweeter and the Monkey Man".
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Odd how your teenage Rock-n-Roll fantasy crush is the only one who isn't a cynical commercial hack, isn't it?
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Oh, I mean, I know it's only rock 'n roll...
But I like it.
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Hey, hey, my my. Rock and roll will never die.
Just hang your hair down in your eyes and make a million dollars.
Does anybody remember Todd Snyder (besides me)?
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Hey, hey, my my. Rock and roll will never die.
Ah!
See, for some reason I wanted to post the lyrics to Keep on Rockin' in the Free World, but I wasn't sure why.
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Sharing my feelings on Dylansteencamp with other internet friends, someone pointed out that there are two kinds of people in the world... Neil Young people and Bob Dylan people and... yeah, she's probably right.
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I'll be a Leonard Cohen person if I can restrict myself to listening to people who've covered his stuff.
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Sharing my feelings on Dylansteencamp with other internet friends, someone pointed out that there are two kinds of people in the world... Neil Young people and Bob Dylan people and... yeah, she's probably right.
I am both those kinds of people, so, no.
Unless there is some Venn-diagramness going on.
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I've met and interacted with two of the three that sMets is setting on fire so his opinion on them is pretty much amusing self-conceptions to me.
Amuse me some more, dude, tell me what you think about Willie Nelson!
Story Time!
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Any country crooner who does a song about gay cowboys is alright in my book.
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Sharing my feelings on Dylansteencamp with other internet friends, someone pointed out that there are two kinds of people in the world... Neil Young people and Bob Dylan people and... yeah, she's probably right.
Um, no, at least three... Do we really have to choose between whiny-non-singing-voice pretentious baby boomer political singer-songwriter or the other? Can't one abstain?
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I will let her know, Ash.
I knew you had met Some Dudes but I can't keep track of who all. I was hoping for...I dunno...narrative examples of how nice people can be?
I have read some such things about Scott Bakula but am sort of curious as to what it's like to hang out with The Coog. I mean, I think I can imagine it, but you can never tell how much of a person's attitude is just stage presence, you know?
Just tell me it's exactly like you'd expect, and I'll be happy.
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;D
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Go to Brooklyn. Transfer from the G train to the L train on a Friday or Saturday night. those are f u c k i n g hipsters. Not college radio types. Not indie rockers. Not scenesters. Not art kids. Not well dressed 24 year olds. Not party people. Not cokeheads. HIPSTERS. Everything else this side of Berlin is an imitation.
Hipsterism is way more than music. Lots of those kids don't give a shit about Animal Collective, Vampire Weekend, or whoever. It's about projecting an extremely calculated form or privileged-cool. And cool is about the shittiest concept we ever came up with as a culture. The whole point of it is to put model-years on everything so no matter what you like, you have to be constantly buying the new version of it.
I was an indie rock teen in the 90s and then went to college in new york in 2001. 2000s capital h-Hipsterism is a weird small little thing, and it's hella obnoxious. My response to it was to buy the Harry Smith anthology of American folk music and quit going out to live music for 4 years. This made me sad, and even worse made me realize that rock and roll has not had one single new idea since the 80s. Lo-fi was the last cutting edge, and Neutral Milk made the last decent Lo-fi record in 1998. Rock and roll right now is jazz circa oh 1976 or so. There's still lots of good people doing good work, but innovation has vanished and the audience is going away. In 10 years it will be nothing but nerds and geezers. Rock and roll will never die, but it will only live in the same sense that 18th century Venetian waltzes are still alive. Want to hear rock and roll's death rattle? Watch Scrubs.
Cool on the other hand is frikkin immortal. And rock and roll had a lot to do with that. It took the edge and energy of black underground culture and mainstreamed it, making a boatload of money in the process and turned cyclic media addiction into cultural currency. Rock and roll is a corpse to be thrown over the railing, but Madison Avenue will keep cool alive until the bombs start falling or the aliens show up or the extinction virus / self-aware-international-banking-computer / or whatever else kills us all.
These days I'm just trying to see as many of the 50s greats as I can before they all die. I got to meet Bo Diddley a couple years ago, and that was just the coolest thing in my entire life ever.
Hmmm that got depressing. I need more sleep.
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Everything else this side of Berlin is an imitation.
my possibly-best-friend/future roommate who is from Brooklyn says the same thing. He laughs. "These people think they're hipsters? hilarious."
I don't know. There's plenty of music in the world which isn't anything new, and it's still good. I am OK with seeing bands that I enjoy that don't have any new ideas, just new songs.
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cool is about the shittiest concept we ever came up with as a culture. The whole point of it is to put model-years on everything so no matter what you like, you have to be constantly buying the new version of it.
Want to hear rock and roll's death rattle? Watch Scrubs.
So much wisdom here.
You are canned and "Scrubs" is terrible and the sky is blue.
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I hate when I realize that I hate something so much (scrubs, 95% of family guy) and my roommates all love it unconditionally.
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Scrubs is the living breathing oozing horrifying television version of "twee".
"Gosh, aren't we clever? Aren't we so amazingly clever? I mean, wow, we just can't get over ourselves and how clever we are? Oh man, we're meta and it feels so good!"
Oh man, when the revolution goes down, involvement in "Scrubs" is definitely gonna involve a coupla years breakin' rocks and stampin' out license plates.
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I haven't seen Scrubs for a while but I have to stand by the first season as being hell-of awesome.
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Oh, the first season or so was kinda okay, by the standards of the half-hour comedy.
But by the end, oh man, just a big jump-cutty precious trainwreck cartoon of forced-hipness.
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As I say I haven't seen it in a few seasons, i think I tuned out sometime before the midget janitor became a regular character.
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I mean.
I feel like the difference is that there is some "twee" that is really goddamn good, and little-to-no Scrubs that is even kind of good.
I mean, one time I laughed at one of the jokes, I think.
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Go to Brooklyn.
I miss when Brooklyn was normal.
I'm so old that... my best friend in Brooklyn has owned her co-op for about twenty years, and now she's become that old tenant who thinks all the new people are crazy because they want to, like, paint the hallways just because the color isn't fashionable.
Yes, those are my people now.
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Music that isn't ground-breakingly original isn't a problem. In fact, it's a huge problem when a community refuses to hone ideas rather than just throw them away for being three months old. However, when it's been a decade since a band has come along that doesn't sound like their parents, the ship is definitely sinking.
I have trouble listening to Radiohead for the same reason I have trouble listening to 1970s Miles Davis. I find both less interesting than the more energetic music that preceded them. In isolation, I think they're just fine. But since they're sort of the last hurrah of their musical form being taken seriously, it's too depressing to invest in.
Of course if you really want to get depressed by musical history, get into the blues. W. C. Handy did very well for himself, and John Lee Hooker got most of the respect and a good part of the money he deserved. Other than that, early deaths and record label shaftings from start to finish. Whenever I pirate music, I think about blues musicians and what record labels have been doing for nearly 100 years now. When the big labels start folding, I'm going to be as happy as I was wen Reagan died.
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Oh and similarly, Scrubs isn't that offensive of a show. It's ten times smarter than Friends. It could actually be good and interesting if they'd go ahead and make the two main characters gay. Late life coming out could be a pretty good, relatively unmined source of humor. The problem isn't Scrubs. The problem is that Scrubs is one of the best comedies on TV. And the problem is that Zach Braff has the same NPR-approved lite rock taste as my 60 year old mother.
Of course, for TV humor, we were spoiled rotten by the 90s. The Simpsons, MST3K, Kids in the Hall, the Phil Hartman cast of SNL, Mr. Show, Futurama, Space Ghost, Bevis and Butthead (a lot more clever than I remembered), UCB, Seinfeld was innovative and funny even if it did wear out its welcome.
They really shouldn't have canceled Arrested Development. Anyway, 2000s TV is about serial drama. Everyone go rent The Wire.
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Bon Jovi is the Led Zeppelin of Hair Metal.
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That is... uh... wow.
I'm not even that big a Led Zepplin fan but I hurt for them.
That is some Harsh Judgement there.
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I was really really into led zeppelin until I started realizing that... I just like the riffs. not the endless solos, violin-bowing, folky songs, etc. COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN! HEARTBREAKER!
then I started listening to punk and Black Sabbath instead.
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I'm not disagreeing with you, 'Nev, but...
Comparing them to the Ken-doll created-by-committee blandness of Bon Jovi is just... man... there ain't many people who deserve that. That is just mean in a manner I can't go with.
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I was not comparing Bon Jovi to Led Zeppelin. I was merely stating that to the fans of that particular genre (hair metal) they are the pinnacle in much the same way that Led Zeppelin are the pinnacle of what they do.
However, I must say your willingness to demonize any music you don't appreciate is very tiring.
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Oh, its as much a running gag as anything at this point.
I mean, I believe the things I write basically... but I draw great joy from exaggeration.
Jon Bon Jovi as rock 'n' roll neutered and turned to plastic to the point of becoming a Ken doll, I like the image.
"Dead or Alive" can be fun to sing along to if I'm bombed-drunk, of course.
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See, Paul, I thought you were saying that Zep and Bon Jovi are both easily recognizable even by people who aren't usually into the genre. Which is viewed by some as a bad thing, I guess?
I like them both, so, whatever.
This is why I don't get into music discussions any more. Because deep down,
in the darkest recesses of my soul,
I love pink wine and radio songs.
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In Highschool, I was into the college complaint rock. (I still am, but ... I'm not as hardcore about it.) I would readily tell someone "Oh... Nevermind? You should have heard them back when they were good on Subpop." In retrospect, I was a little douchey about music. It's ok though. I was in High School. You have to be douchey about specific things.
There was this show on MTV a while ago called "Austin Stories". It was a pretty decent show. Probably one of the last artful things they aired. This was 1995 or so.
One of the characters, Howard, was chiding the other character, Chip, for his enjoyment of the Spice Girls. His response cured me of my insufferable indy-rock snobbery that I had been going through.
"They make, fun, memorable music. What's wrong with that?"
So I guess, I say to you, even the guilty pleasures... they're pleasurable.
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I wasn't saying that Led Zeppelin are bad, LFM. Some of their stuff is awesome. I just meant that at some point I realized they weren't what I wanted to listen to, other than certain songs.