Ah, the weekend: when entertainment news decides to nap. That's why on Saturdays, I use a different format. I mention the few entertainment news pieces worth mentioning, and then I write an editorial about what I'm preoccupied with. Sundays are my Week in Literal Review days, when I review music and movies.
INTERESTING NEWS:
If you mess with Noel Gallagher, you are going to go to prison.
Rogen's Green Hornet may be dead.
Sundance Award results have been posted!
IMPORTANT NEWS:
Schools in Gaza have reopened.
EDITORIAL:
Sometimes I think that the new elitism is the art of appearing "down to earth." Don't get me wrong, I think true casual simplicity is rad and all, but it feels like there's a culture of feigned stupidity developing in response to intellectualism.
For instance, if you listen to complex, textural music with discord and jarring rhythm, people will write you off: "You're just a music snob." But this seems backwards to me. The nature of snobbery is to listen to/enjoy only a small canon of elite things; cutting out all experimental music sets up just such a canon.
I'm probably not making myself clear. I guess I feel like the old-school connotation of elitism, as it applies to the arts, is utterly worthless. That old-school connotation observed elite tendencies amongst the avant garde, which were accurate, but the contemporary avant garde are far from arrogant. No Age, at their own personal forefront of noise music, are friendly and accessible. The same seems to go for a lot of today's experimental groups; hell, when I met Fuck Buttons, they were grinning sincerely, shaking hands, and helping to sell their own merch. Is that behavior typical amongst the "everyman" top-40 bands that play to gargantuan stadiums and desperately avoid encounters with fans?
As it is with music, so it is with the rest of the arts. When you react less-than-favorably to crowd-pleasing cotton candy cinema, most people immediately snub you. And in visual art, if you have a philosophical or metaphorical idea behind your work, it's best to keep your lips sealed lest you seem pretentious. (God forbid!)
Bottomline is, when you start completely shutting out or writing off creative output on superficial grounds, you're acting in a snobbish way. Hence, if you listen exclusively to the mainstream, you're acting in a snobbish way.
It's the cult of the wannabe dillettante, and although I should probably be concerned or upset, I'm too busy revelling in the delicious irony of an elitist mob wearing thousand dollar sweatpants.
PERSONAL:
What a great Album Day! I'll let you know in advance: my review for Merriweather Post Pavilion will just be gushy praise. (I haven't tackled the Crying Light yet; I need to work this bliss out of my system first) I sat in the back of the Exposition, the bus I take home from 6th and Lamar (the best spot in Austin: Whole Foods + Waterloo Records) and sitting in the back for the first time in a while, I forgot how fast that bus feels. Feeling so fast, listening to the glorious electronic rushes in MPP, god, it is a moment I'll keep with me for a long time.
On the other hand, Che part one (from last night) was a decidedly mixed affair; I'll cover this more tomorrow.
2009 FILMS SEEN: 1.5
2009 SONGS ON MY ITUNES: 104
Current Computer Situation: MacBook Pro, nice and room-temperature.
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