It's absolutely true that Musk is trying to wrap himself in the mantle of the Common Man, embracing all the conservative assumptions about what the Common Man wants: “Fuck your universal healthcare and access to the polls, I want to watch Tom Cruise blow things up while I die of a treatable disease, Wokesters.”
But I find the most tragi-comic – and maddening -- thing about Musk to be his fans. When I look at what’s happening at Twitter, I’m reminded of the tried and true comedic premise of the protagonist who can never admit he made a mistake: he never course-corrects, his every new blunder generates an accelerating level of chaos, until finally he’s standing in the street after setting his own house on fire, loudly proclaiming “I meant to do that.”
Except in Musk’s case it’s his fanbois who are saying it *FOR* him. In a month, if the only things remaining at Twitter are Elon himself and a mainframe computer the size of a bowling alley, and he has to run an extension cord to a neighboring building because nobody paid the electric bill, his fanbois will STILL be saying “he meant to do that.”
Thanks to that Some More News video "Why aren't conservatives funny?" I'm now an expert on conservative "comedy", and it's ALL "I meant to do that." Step 1 is a "joke" that's not, you know, funny, and Step 2 is people not-laughing at not-funny, Step 3 is "Ha, that's what I WANTED, you not-laughing, it's all part of the bit!" They can literally NEVER fail.
And meanwhile, the biggest "anti-woke" "anti-elitist" billionaire "populist" in the world is hawking trading cards of himself photoshopped as a super-hero for $99 a pop. Nothing "elitist" about that.
I mean, awful people pandering to worse people, please. The crap is only as significant and we make it.
BTW: I think I'm ready after the 24+ hours to walk back my presumption that Twitter will survive Musk. If it does, it's going to be as Parler 2.0. Til the lack of supervision gets it booted off of app stores. Then it'll be a sub-Parler at best.
I’m already tired of Musk. He’s so predictable, as if a TV series writers’ room was told their show needed a rich, unselfaware asshole character and they decided to toss in every cliche they could think of. To me the more interesting part of Roy’s essay is the question, “What is the right standard for good art?” How many people get to see a movie depends on a lot more than its quality, like the luck of the draw of opening weekend, or how much PR was pushed early on, so that’s not a reliable measure. I’m reminded of a back and forth in high school art class, where we were exposed to representative examples from centuries of painting in the hope we would take away a lifetime of appreciation for how art (or artists) work. To a student’s objection that he already knew what he liked, our teacher replied, “You know what you like, but do you know why you like it?” I haven’t looked at a painting, watched a movie, read a book or listened to music since then without hearing that question in the back of my mind. I doubt Musk has any idea why he likes “Top Gun” more than “Coda,” and why the latter has more to say to him than the former ever could.
Rich unselfaware asshole character does not have to be a complete dick like Elmo. Thurston Howell III was a rich unselfaware asshole, and yet still managed some sort of endearing charm and humanity.
I read something a while back about something called "The Avatar Paradox", which is that the highest-grossing film in history doesn't have a single memorable line and has left hardly trace on human memory (although there's a sequel coming out, so that'll be GREAT, won't it?). So maybe film critics, who can easily list films more than 70 years old that people still think and talk about, look at current films with an eye for today's Citizen Kane (lost $160,000 on its initial run) and not today's Louisiana Purchase (3rd-highest grossing film in 1941).
Box office success is absolutely NO indicator of quality, especially here in America. "Avatar" certainly stands out as an example. But consider all the movies that have won Best Motion Picture at the Oscars or Cannes . . . and are today either completely forgotten or reduced to being shown at 2AM on Podunk TV.
Americans LOVE them some swill. Low-taste and no-taste bring in the box office. We consume more shitty fast food, more shitty snack food, and more shitty beer and soda than all other nations on Earth combined. We LOVE that shit, and will happily suck down Dominoes' microwaved batter balls with a chicken bone inside, while turning our nose up at chicken Francaise because it just sounds too foreign and snooty.
Don't get me wrong, I liked Avatar just fine, it's just I can't remember a damn thing about it. I've noticed here, when we get to trading favorite movie lines back and forth, or using a favorite line to recall a favorite film, that dialogue is principally how we remember a movie. If you put all your money into CGI and not much thought into dialogue (maybe because you're going after the biggest international audience and good dialogue in one language may not translate well into others) that's fine, enjoy your money but please don't expect any of us to remember later what you did.
Also, forgettable movies with lots of big explosions are easy to rebroadcast with commercials inserted. It doesn’t matter where you insert the commercial; it’s not like you’re going to interrupt Hamlet’s soliloquy or an emotional moment that took ten minutes to set up. People can tune in or tune out anytime and pick up on the “plot” as things explode with noisy abandon.
I remember hearing somewhere that part of the reason for big dumb explodey movies was the overseas markets; it's easier to translate an action film than something with serious dialog.
But apparently it's not enough that these movies get all the money, they need a pat on the head and reassurance that they're THE BEST. Ah, who am I kidding, the people who make this stuff are perfectly happy with just the money.
The Cartoon Network series Steven Universe has amazing TV show parodies inside it, and one is "Little Butler" featuring a small-sized butler (with a little kid voice) and his cluelessly wealthy employers. The premise is the family found their new butler on their doorstep as a cliched foundling, but instead of becoming part of the family, they put him to work.
To the second point, Musk likes Top Gun Maverick no more than me -- and I didn't need to see it -- he's just glomming onto another person's point. It's pretty much his brand & his career trajectory...
Being introspective is alien to Americans, and a sign of snooty better-than-us elitism. All I can think of is those Apple Jacks commercials: "we eat what we like!"
To be fair to Elon (really? oh, why not) most people have no idea of the point of a top/best list of anything. And it's never about how "good" something is, which is of course what Musk is assuming, along with what "good" means. Movie critics (the "good" ones, anyway) have a detailed and thought-out way of watching movies, and their lists are supposed to point you to movies they found especially rewarding and impressive, for reasons they tried to explain if you'd read the fucking review. You might not agree (quite often I don't) but that's not the point. In this, as in so many other ways, Musk is modeling himself as a mediocre cog in the machine, in the hope of holding the attention and loyalty of all the cogs out there who consider Top Gun 2 the best movie of 2022 because it left them limp in their IMAX seat covered in jizz.
Back when Ebert and Siskel were doing this, I felt we could do without the hard sell, just make it "Roger Ebert's list of ten movies you should probably see if you can find the time" and leave it at that.
I mean, I get it. A movie critic has invested their career, identity, etc. in loving and understanding movies, and they get 1 shot a year at pointing out their favorite/overlooked/underappreciated movies. Who knows where/when the "best" list meme started, but it's a handy and obvious way to get the public's attention, so they use it. I would, if anyone cared what I thought.
I know *we* all know better here, but it’s enraging how many people, including savvy media pundits, insist on taking everything Feline Musk says at face value. He *never* gave a crap about free speech, and it’s always been transparently obvious. But no, we have to play along as they blink, newborn and dewy-eyed, pretending every random, manic shift is ACKshually a newly-revealed nuance to a deeply held principle.
I wish they’d spare us the crap. We’ve all known bullshitters, shitbirds, and narcissists in our lives. A patina of wealth doesn’t change any of the garbage inside.
Money changes everything--including transparent bullshit which money magically changes into Gospel Truth/Word of God. Donald Trump is far more stupid than anyone can possibly imagine, but the fact that he has fat stacks of cash turns even his most stupid pronouncements into something that needs to be weighed, considered, evaluated, and treated seriously.
So too, with the Muskelid. He's wealthy beyond anyone's dreams of avarice. Therefore, he MUST be smart and the tings he says MUST contain revealed Truth.
The NY Times just had some godawful piece about how nobody can possibly figure out Elmo's politics, they're an enigma wrapped in a riddle, etc. Truly a remarkable performance, so much effort put into not-seeing, because seeing wouldn't be a smart career move.
Not a big fan of the Who, so I admit all I knew of Tommy is that one song about pinball, but I clicked on the Wikipedia entry that Roy linked to, and that's a helluva backstory the poor kid's got.
Maybe I'm an anomaly, but I enjoy both high and low-brow forms of films, music, whatever. I watch a lot of sf/action/superhero-type stuff mainly because, at the end of the work week, I enjoy seeing good defeat evil, seeing the bad guy get the shit kicked out of him, seeing... well, you get it. I wanna rock! It's fun and mindless and goes great with beer and snacks. I understand it and I understand it's appeal. But, I also understand that that's not all there is out there.
And it IS the truly artistic stuff that gives me my moments of pure, jaw-dropping, "holy fucking shit!" But I can only take those moments in small doses, or I'd be the friend-nobody-wants who's constantly screaming shit like "What the fuck do you mean you haven't seen Nomadland!?" in people's faces at parties. The really good shit is often dark, sometimes painful to watch, and (lol) hardly ever has a happy ending (that sentence brought to you by Ingmar Bergman--fuck, I'm as existentialist as the next guy born in a frozen fucking wasteland, but talk about a killjoy!). Anyway, what I mean is that I *eventually* get to most of the stuff like what's on the Times' top ten, but that, except for "Nope," I haven't heard of any of those movies, *until now.* So, this particular Times reviewer has done his job.
Slightly embarrassing aside: 1) I enjoyed the new "Top Gun" a LOT more than I thought I would; 2) while I found "Nope" to be very interesting visually, I honestly didn't get it (but it wouldn't be the first time I didn't initially understand something--I'll watch it again).
Listen, small indie movies have much more late-pandemic trouble getting seen than big-studio movies -- of course you haven't heard of them! It's not your fault and it's not A.O. Scott's fault either.
Also, anyone who's screaming "What the fuck do you mean you haven't seen Nomadland!?" is not friend to the lively arts.
Does it work this way with restaurants? If the Times puts out a "Ten best restaurants in New York" list does Elmo say, "Never eaten at any of 'em, the Times has gone FULL WOKE" or does he say, "Thanks, maybe I'll try some of them the next time I'm in town!"
I hadn't heard of them either, but I haven't been to the movies in years and haven't been paying attention. There's a theater downtown that shows indie films, and I keep thinking of going there, but that's the extent of attention I've paid to movies. Hell, I haven't seen any of the recent proliferation of Marvel films.
But you're supposed to be MAD for some reason I can't understand. Apparently, people aren't allowed to NOT have opinions on ANYTHING, it's now forbidden to say, "Eh, sorry, haven't seen 'em, maybe they're good, maybe not, don't know enough to comment."
RWers will never understand that if a person who knows a fair amount about film & sees a lot of them in a given year says they have ten favorites, that doesn't mean my favorite is any less my favorite or may have appealed to others as well. They also don't understand that no one has to proclaim the virtues of the big-budget & over-hyped because those proclamations are everywhere ("hegemonic," ya might say...)
But one can see how this logic can be extended to "gay marriage" (or we like to call in the real world, "marriage"), or drag shows, or Google homepage banners, or whatever.
You know, I'm old to remember when the boomers & conservabros were _soooo_ angry about "participation trophies" -- now we have an Oscars best picture list drastically expanded so some chuds can say their popular favorite has at least some shot at the title.
Maybe, if I may (& I will so there), is that the nagging sense of thoroughgoing mediocrity at the core of white people, of middle management, of dudebros, requires the world the reflect back their imagined glory. If that light flickers even for a second, their ego goes dark. They are no one at all. If only they would shut up about it...
Addendum: hmmm, this last part reminds me of this, which I haven't heard in a bit:
Just on this thing about mediocrity generally: I'm really interested in cars, and their history and the technology and how it's evolving, but I recognize that for most people a car is just a wheeled box that gets you back and forth to work, and they couldn't tell you how many cylinders their car's engine has or even if it has cylinders at all.
And it's just like that with everything, if you're really into food, maybe local and organic or foreign and exotic, it's a shock to realize that, for most people, it's just fuel, they'll eat almost anything put in front of them and then not even be able to remember what they ate ten minutes ago.
Or music, you're passionate about the local bands, love music history, can't wait to see what your favorite artists are putting out next, but for most people it's just background, they'll happily accept whatever was popular when they were young and leave it at that (unless they're David Brooks, of course).
My point here is definitely NOT that "most people are shit", it's that the guy who doesn't give a shit about cars is really passionate about music, or the gal who doesn't give any thought to music is really into food. Just statistically, if most people can sustain at most one passion in their life, then the odds are it won't be YOUR passion.
I love visiting other people's passions. Since we've been talking about movies, I'll mention "Strictly Ballroom" which I loved even though I don't dance and you can't make me. I always think of Mr. Bennet in "Pride and Preudice" - "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” I almost always mean it warmly and with affection.
Right-wingers don’t understand that they can like what they like, regardless of what anyone else thinks, because as sniveling authoritarians they need someone to tell them what they like.
Sorta reminds me of a high-school bully trying to pick a fight, if you say you like strawberry ice cream, he says "Oh, you're saying you HATE me for liking vanilla, is that it, HUH?"
YES! WITH A BLINDING RAGING FURY! VANILLA IS RIDICULOUSLY OVERHYPED AND UNDER-FLAVORED AND OH, SO ELITE!! DEBATE ME YOU COWARD! WITH YOUR TINY LITTLE TOOTHPICKS AND YOUR ONE-DAY-A-YEAR FLOWERS!
I know without cognitive dissonance they'd have no cognitive at all, but their hero Elmo owns an ELECTRIC car company. Check out the comments below any article about electric cars (actually, don't, it's a dumpster fire) and you can see what right-wingers think of those sissy soy-boy electric cars, plus the fact that Joe Biden is FORCING you to buy one. Tesla, of course, has benefited hugely from SOCIALIST tax credits for the buyers of electric cars and Teslas are loved by the coastal elites including many HOLLYWOOD LIBERALS, but that's all cool, I guess, because Elmo is One Of Us, and can do no wrong.
This has been another installment in my continuing series on how this one opinion held by conservatives is not consistent with other other opinions held by conservatives, be sure to like and subscribe!
Trying to hold back on the all-caps (you can see how well that's going) so as to save on mimeograph ink. Stuff's getting harder and harder to find these days, what with all the aging boomers huffing to take themselves back to their childhoods.
I’m minded of the time I set out to dutifully watch Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog because more than one friend had recommended it.
It’s a slowwww movie, and the ambiguity of so many of the characters’ feelings and actions was irritating. Campion doesn’t spell anything out, you have to do your own work and you can never be sure you’ve “got it.”
So it was a little annoying and I still have lots of questions (Hey did I miss something? What are the rings the mother-in-law gives to the Kirsten Dunst character at the funeral… and why? Why was she SO unsettled by the Cumberbatch character from the jump? Was there a prior relationship? And so on.) The very definition of a movie that “makes you think.”
I was impatient for answers. Still want ‘em. Didn’t like the feeling of uncertainty. In the end I realized that even as she was chronicling the (puzzling) emotional evolution of the characters, she was laying the foundations of the “story.” You hardly even notice.
But. It all adds up. It’s a finely tuned accumulation to set up that mindblow of an ending. For me it was literally a jaw dropper—my mouth actually fell open when I “got it.”
I wish there was a way that I could talk about it without spoiling it, because it was just…perfect.
Alla yins (including Roy/excluding GM* – props!) missin' the point:
The person what gets paid to watch movies fer a living will see MANY more movies than possibly all y'all combined! Some of them are bound to be purty gud. When you don't know anything about what's on their list, it don't mean nothin'! That film writer prolly knows next to nothin' 'bout the best way to drop an engine and when you need to v. when you don't...but they're not draggin' on you mechanics.
The lack of awareness (alternately, the simple cussedness) of experts in one field who decline to give credit where due to experts in another field is widespread and to be deplored by all thinking persons**.
*Edited to add & SteveB, except his writing's kinda hard to pin down, so the jury, as they say in Canada, is still oot.
A few of the more prominent climate cranks are theoretical physicists, who just can't believe other people are smart and can figure stuff out. One guy claimed that climate scientists were calculating the average temperature of the earth incorrectly, because, you know, "average" is such a difficult mathematical concept that only theoretical physicists truly understand what it means. Anyway, the guy got a bunch of money to redo calculations that had already been done (but in his special theoretical-physicist way, I guess.) After about a year he shamefacedly had to admit that climate scientists did, in fact, know how to correctly calculate average. I suppose we should give him a participation trophy for being willing to admit he was horribly and comically wrong, that's how low I've set the bar these days.
I knew a duffer who was pretty good on the course when just playing for fun, but every time he entered a tournament it was as if he'd forgotten how to play. One of the tournament organizers felt so bad for him that she made up a custom prize for him alone.
This reminds me of an aquaintance (lawyer who drives a six-figure Range Rover) who once, during a light-hearted discussion of famous private detectives, was irritated that people were talking about Poirot, Maigret, Wallendar, etc., and not American dectectives. When invited to suggest his favorite American gumshoe, he didn't mention Philip Marlow or Travis McGee, but rather touted Thomas Magnum (Magnum PI) as a dectective Americans could identify with.
This is a brilliant essay. I love wealthy conservatives accusing people and institutions of being "elite," braying that supporting abortion rights, universal healthcare, and higher taxes on billionaires is "elitist" when large majorities of the populace do just that. Irony abounds. Or maybe just bullshit. In this case, I want to ask them, in Dana Carvey's most accusatory Church Lady voice, "And who is it that made this 'Top Gun: Maverick' movie that has your loins all aflame, hmmmm? Was it........ HOLLYWOOD!!!?"
I keep waiting for all these me-o-centric fools to run out of energy defending lost or never-were causes, but their staunch resoluteness seems indefatigable. won't Elmo please take them all to Galt's gulch, which I hear is somewhere in the martian highlands?
If I was a major Tesla/SpaceX stock holder, I'd be "hair on fire" mad right now. Everything he's doing screams "micromanager", which we knew that when we heard stories about Tesla's shoddy safety records, attributed to Musk's dislike of the color yellow. If he's got time to tweet all day, what the hell is he doing with his time?
So the world's richest micromanager fancies himself a movie critic? JFC let's hope he doesn't decide to purchase an airline, because jets will be falling out of the sky when he discovers that the pilots are just too "woke".
It's absolutely true that Musk is trying to wrap himself in the mantle of the Common Man, embracing all the conservative assumptions about what the Common Man wants: “Fuck your universal healthcare and access to the polls, I want to watch Tom Cruise blow things up while I die of a treatable disease, Wokesters.”
But I find the most tragi-comic – and maddening -- thing about Musk to be his fans. When I look at what’s happening at Twitter, I’m reminded of the tried and true comedic premise of the protagonist who can never admit he made a mistake: he never course-corrects, his every new blunder generates an accelerating level of chaos, until finally he’s standing in the street after setting his own house on fire, loudly proclaiming “I meant to do that.”
Except in Musk’s case it’s his fanbois who are saying it *FOR* him. In a month, if the only things remaining at Twitter are Elon himself and a mainframe computer the size of a bowling alley, and he has to run an extension cord to a neighboring building because nobody paid the electric bill, his fanbois will STILL be saying “he meant to do that.”
Not common man, a subset of common man.
Thanks to that Some More News video "Why aren't conservatives funny?" I'm now an expert on conservative "comedy", and it's ALL "I meant to do that." Step 1 is a "joke" that's not, you know, funny, and Step 2 is people not-laughing at not-funny, Step 3 is "Ha, that's what I WANTED, you not-laughing, it's all part of the bit!" They can literally NEVER fail.
This is the legacy of The Office...
And meanwhile, the biggest "anti-woke" "anti-elitist" billionaire "populist" in the world is hawking trading cards of himself photoshopped as a super-hero for $99 a pop. Nothing "elitist" about that.
Well, of course it's not elitist, he'll take ANYONE'S money.
Update: BBC news is now saying it's sold out, 45,000 NFT's at $100 each, $4.5 million in one day. Jesus.
I think ‘billionaire’ needs some irony quotation marks.
"The public be damned!" L. Ron Musth, 2022
Finally he gets one right!
Eh, I'm thinking Roy may need a break, maybe time off til after the holidays.
Panderers to people who hate knowledge, who think knowing anything is somehow uppity and elitist, of course will say what's burning Roy's ass.
Speaking of the circle jerk of imbecility, I suppose I should provide this link and the discussion about tribes:
https://collabfund.com/blog/ideas-that-changed-my-life/
I mean, awful people pandering to worse people, please. The crap is only as significant and we make it.
BTW: I think I'm ready after the 24+ hours to walk back my presumption that Twitter will survive Musk. If it does, it's going to be as Parler 2.0. Til the lack of supervision gets it booted off of app stores. Then it'll be a sub-Parler at best.
TIME OFF? What do you think he is, some sort of railroad worker? Oh, wait, they don't get time off, never mind.
We had a subparlor. Damp as a squib.
I’m already tired of Musk. He’s so predictable, as if a TV series writers’ room was told their show needed a rich, unselfaware asshole character and they decided to toss in every cliche they could think of. To me the more interesting part of Roy’s essay is the question, “What is the right standard for good art?” How many people get to see a movie depends on a lot more than its quality, like the luck of the draw of opening weekend, or how much PR was pushed early on, so that’s not a reliable measure. I’m reminded of a back and forth in high school art class, where we were exposed to representative examples from centuries of painting in the hope we would take away a lifetime of appreciation for how art (or artists) work. To a student’s objection that he already knew what he liked, our teacher replied, “You know what you like, but do you know why you like it?” I haven’t looked at a painting, watched a movie, read a book or listened to music since then without hearing that question in the back of my mind. I doubt Musk has any idea why he likes “Top Gun” more than “Coda,” and why the latter has more to say to him than the former ever could.
Rich unselfaware asshole character does not have to be a complete dick like Elmo. Thurston Howell III was a rich unselfaware asshole, and yet still managed some sort of endearing charm and humanity.
Fictional.
World's Richest Man Has World's Thinnest Skin, A Continuing Series
Is that why Zuckerberg needs all that sunblock?
I read something a while back about something called "The Avatar Paradox", which is that the highest-grossing film in history doesn't have a single memorable line and has left hardly trace on human memory (although there's a sequel coming out, so that'll be GREAT, won't it?). So maybe film critics, who can easily list films more than 70 years old that people still think and talk about, look at current films with an eye for today's Citizen Kane (lost $160,000 on its initial run) and not today's Louisiana Purchase (3rd-highest grossing film in 1941).
Box office success is absolutely NO indicator of quality, especially here in America. "Avatar" certainly stands out as an example. But consider all the movies that have won Best Motion Picture at the Oscars or Cannes . . . and are today either completely forgotten or reduced to being shown at 2AM on Podunk TV.
Americans LOVE them some swill. Low-taste and no-taste bring in the box office. We consume more shitty fast food, more shitty snack food, and more shitty beer and soda than all other nations on Earth combined. We LOVE that shit, and will happily suck down Dominoes' microwaved batter balls with a chicken bone inside, while turning our nose up at chicken Francaise because it just sounds too foreign and snooty.
Don't get me wrong, I liked Avatar just fine, it's just I can't remember a damn thing about it. I've noticed here, when we get to trading favorite movie lines back and forth, or using a favorite line to recall a favorite film, that dialogue is principally how we remember a movie. If you put all your money into CGI and not much thought into dialogue (maybe because you're going after the biggest international audience and good dialogue in one language may not translate well into others) that's fine, enjoy your money but please don't expect any of us to remember later what you did.
"Casablanca" waves every page of the script in greeting.
I'll never forget "Suspect the usual roundups."
"Here's kiddin' at you, look!"
Also, forgettable movies with lots of big explosions are easy to rebroadcast with commercials inserted. It doesn’t matter where you insert the commercial; it’s not like you’re going to interrupt Hamlet’s soliloquy or an emotional moment that took ten minutes to set up. People can tune in or tune out anytime and pick up on the “plot” as things explode with noisy abandon.
I remember hearing somewhere that part of the reason for big dumb explodey movies was the overseas markets; it's easier to translate an action film than something with serious dialog.
But apparently it's not enough that these movies get all the money, they need a pat on the head and reassurance that they're THE BEST. Ah, who am I kidding, the people who make this stuff are perfectly happy with just the money.
Yeah. Those French chickens be all "Bien sur ve have ze lips! Don't TOUS les poulets?!"
The Cartoon Network series Steven Universe has amazing TV show parodies inside it, and one is "Little Butler" featuring a small-sized butler (with a little kid voice) and his cluelessly wealthy employers. The premise is the family found their new butler on their doorstep as a cliched foundling, but instead of becoming part of the family, they put him to work.
To the second point, Musk likes Top Gun Maverick no more than me -- and I didn't need to see it -- he's just glomming onto another person's point. It's pretty much his brand & his career trajectory...
My favorite is "Crying Breakfast Friends," which appears to be a nifty spoof of other Adult Swim cartoon shows
I read your last line as "why the lather has more to say" and realized maybe it IS time for me to settle down and learn to love the afternoon soaps...
Do you mean they guy who puts up the lath for the plasterers? Yeah, those guys always have a LOT to say.
Well, chapeau, but I was thinkin' more along the lines of Dr Bronner's Lather o' Doom.
Careful, we don't want to get the Dr. Bronner's thread started up again.
No worries, unless you've set your screen to the teeny tiniest font...
No need to get worked up to a lather over it...
Not ME! I'm already 99 & 44/100ths% PURE!
With just enough air whipped in so you don't sink to the bottom of the tub.
Being introspective is alien to Americans, and a sign of snooty better-than-us elitism. All I can think of is those Apple Jacks commercials: "we eat what we like!"
Modern iteration: We shit where we eat!
But slightly downstream – we're not heathens!
To be fair to Elon (really? oh, why not) most people have no idea of the point of a top/best list of anything. And it's never about how "good" something is, which is of course what Musk is assuming, along with what "good" means. Movie critics (the "good" ones, anyway) have a detailed and thought-out way of watching movies, and their lists are supposed to point you to movies they found especially rewarding and impressive, for reasons they tried to explain if you'd read the fucking review. You might not agree (quite often I don't) but that's not the point. In this, as in so many other ways, Musk is modeling himself as a mediocre cog in the machine, in the hope of holding the attention and loyalty of all the cogs out there who consider Top Gun 2 the best movie of 2022 because it left them limp in their IMAX seat covered in jizz.
Back when Ebert and Siskel were doing this, I felt we could do without the hard sell, just make it "Roger Ebert's list of ten movies you should probably see if you can find the time" and leave it at that.
I mean, I get it. A movie critic has invested their career, identity, etc. in loving and understanding movies, and they get 1 shot a year at pointing out their favorite/overlooked/underappreciated movies. Who knows where/when the "best" list meme started, but it's a handy and obvious way to get the public's attention, so they use it. I would, if anyone cared what I thought.
Hearted VERY reluctantly.
Geez, Roy--better hold Nole Smuk doesn't read this REBID or you're gonna get banned from Twitter.
Because free speech absolutist is banning people who do not write fawning things about him. You know, in the name of free speech.
I check Twitter every day expecting to be suspended now. Good rehearsal for the last days!
I know *we* all know better here, but it’s enraging how many people, including savvy media pundits, insist on taking everything Feline Musk says at face value. He *never* gave a crap about free speech, and it’s always been transparently obvious. But no, we have to play along as they blink, newborn and dewy-eyed, pretending every random, manic shift is ACKshually a newly-revealed nuance to a deeply held principle.
I wish they’d spare us the crap. We’ve all known bullshitters, shitbirds, and narcissists in our lives. A patina of wealth doesn’t change any of the garbage inside.
Money changes everything--including transparent bullshit which money magically changes into Gospel Truth/Word of God. Donald Trump is far more stupid than anyone can possibly imagine, but the fact that he has fat stacks of cash turns even his most stupid pronouncements into something that needs to be weighed, considered, evaluated, and treated seriously.
So too, with the Muskelid. He's wealthy beyond anyone's dreams of avarice. Therefore, he MUST be smart and the tings he says MUST contain revealed Truth.
And it won't make one bit of difference
If I answer right or wrong
When you're rich they think you really know
Truly, Fiddler on the Roof has a quote for every occasion.
[hides ladder]
"Hey you with the fiddle – how'd you get up there?"
The NY Times just had some godawful piece about how nobody can possibly figure out Elmo's politics, they're an enigma wrapped in a riddle, etc. Truly a remarkable performance, so much effort put into not-seeing, because seeing wouldn't be a smart career move.
Seeing and writing about what yo saw gets your Twitter account banned.
You didn't hear it, you didn't see it...
Periodic reminder that apartheid Seth Efrika didn't allow TV in its country until 1976.
by associating their own policies with signifiers of popularity —
That is particularly meaningful. Fascists and kitsch go together like peanut butter and jelly. (There's an essay about that...
http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html)
" Go to the Mirror, Boy!"
Not a big fan of the Who, so I admit all I knew of Tommy is that one song about pinball, but I clicked on the Wikipedia entry that Roy linked to, and that's a helluva backstory the poor kid's got.
The Ken Russell film is mad and glorious.
I loved that movie even when I wasn't on mescaline. Though mescaline certainly helped!
I never looked at baked beans the same way after that movie.
I don't think Ann Margret was never in a bad movie, I just think she was good in whatever she was in.
Mescaline! Who can get mescaline in this economy!
Send Musk a line...
I haven’t seen that, but I did sit through what Ken Russell did to Wilde’s “Salomé,” and it doesn’t inspire confidence.
It is as of its moment as any movie could possibly be. It is the Great Dictator of rock opera movies. Plus, Ann Margaret and Heinz Baked Beans.
Maybe I'm an anomaly, but I enjoy both high and low-brow forms of films, music, whatever. I watch a lot of sf/action/superhero-type stuff mainly because, at the end of the work week, I enjoy seeing good defeat evil, seeing the bad guy get the shit kicked out of him, seeing... well, you get it. I wanna rock! It's fun and mindless and goes great with beer and snacks. I understand it and I understand it's appeal. But, I also understand that that's not all there is out there.
And it IS the truly artistic stuff that gives me my moments of pure, jaw-dropping, "holy fucking shit!" But I can only take those moments in small doses, or I'd be the friend-nobody-wants who's constantly screaming shit like "What the fuck do you mean you haven't seen Nomadland!?" in people's faces at parties. The really good shit is often dark, sometimes painful to watch, and (lol) hardly ever has a happy ending (that sentence brought to you by Ingmar Bergman--fuck, I'm as existentialist as the next guy born in a frozen fucking wasteland, but talk about a killjoy!). Anyway, what I mean is that I *eventually* get to most of the stuff like what's on the Times' top ten, but that, except for "Nope," I haven't heard of any of those movies, *until now.* So, this particular Times reviewer has done his job.
Slightly embarrassing aside: 1) I enjoyed the new "Top Gun" a LOT more than I thought I would; 2) while I found "Nope" to be very interesting visually, I honestly didn't get it (but it wouldn't be the first time I didn't initially understand something--I'll watch it again).
Listen, small indie movies have much more late-pandemic trouble getting seen than big-studio movies -- of course you haven't heard of them! It's not your fault and it's not A.O. Scott's fault either.
Also, anyone who's screaming "What the fuck do you mean you haven't seen Nomadland!?" is not friend to the lively arts.
Somebody should make a list of these films I've never heard of so I could hear of them and then complain that I've never heard of them.
Does it work this way with restaurants? If the Times puts out a "Ten best restaurants in New York" list does Elmo say, "Never eaten at any of 'em, the Times has gone FULL WOKE" or does he say, "Thanks, maybe I'll try some of them the next time I'm in town!"
Invoke the Yogi about why nobody eats there anymore...
I hadn't heard of them either, but I haven't been to the movies in years and haven't been paying attention. There's a theater downtown that shows indie films, and I keep thinking of going there, but that's the extent of attention I've paid to movies. Hell, I haven't seen any of the recent proliferation of Marvel films.
But you're supposed to be MAD for some reason I can't understand. Apparently, people aren't allowed to NOT have opinions on ANYTHING, it's now forbidden to say, "Eh, sorry, haven't seen 'em, maybe they're good, maybe not, don't know enough to comment."
Just so you know, Roy, I would never scream "What the fuck do you mean you haven't seen Spiderman: No Way Home!?" at you either!
I dunno, it WOULD kinda make the arts more lively...
RWers will never understand that if a person who knows a fair amount about film & sees a lot of them in a given year says they have ten favorites, that doesn't mean my favorite is any less my favorite or may have appealed to others as well. They also don't understand that no one has to proclaim the virtues of the big-budget & over-hyped because those proclamations are everywhere ("hegemonic," ya might say...)
But one can see how this logic can be extended to "gay marriage" (or we like to call in the real world, "marriage"), or drag shows, or Google homepage banners, or whatever.
You know, I'm old to remember when the boomers & conservabros were _soooo_ angry about "participation trophies" -- now we have an Oscars best picture list drastically expanded so some chuds can say their popular favorite has at least some shot at the title.
Maybe, if I may (& I will so there), is that the nagging sense of thoroughgoing mediocrity at the core of white people, of middle management, of dudebros, requires the world the reflect back their imagined glory. If that light flickers even for a second, their ego goes dark. They are no one at all. If only they would shut up about it...
Addendum: hmmm, this last part reminds me of this, which I haven't heard in a bit:
https://youtu.be/bfWGJrwYfBU
So Friday, a GM post that is half-Manque and half-Little PIg. Lol. Stay salty, fuckers.
Just on this thing about mediocrity generally: I'm really interested in cars, and their history and the technology and how it's evolving, but I recognize that for most people a car is just a wheeled box that gets you back and forth to work, and they couldn't tell you how many cylinders their car's engine has or even if it has cylinders at all.
And it's just like that with everything, if you're really into food, maybe local and organic or foreign and exotic, it's a shock to realize that, for most people, it's just fuel, they'll eat almost anything put in front of them and then not even be able to remember what they ate ten minutes ago.
Or music, you're passionate about the local bands, love music history, can't wait to see what your favorite artists are putting out next, but for most people it's just background, they'll happily accept whatever was popular when they were young and leave it at that (unless they're David Brooks, of course).
My point here is definitely NOT that "most people are shit", it's that the guy who doesn't give a shit about cars is really passionate about music, or the gal who doesn't give any thought to music is really into food. Just statistically, if most people can sustain at most one passion in their life, then the odds are it won't be YOUR passion.
I love visiting other people's passions. Since we've been talking about movies, I'll mention "Strictly Ballroom" which I loved even though I don't dance and you can't make me. I always think of Mr. Bennet in "Pride and Preudice" - "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” I almost always mean it warmly and with affection.
That's a great quote -
YES. I am asking the universe to give you a warm hug for both those things you mentioned.
Right-wingers don’t understand that they can like what they like, regardless of what anyone else thinks, because as sniveling authoritarians they need someone to tell them what they like.
Sorta reminds me of a high-school bully trying to pick a fight, if you say you like strawberry ice cream, he says "Oh, you're saying you HATE me for liking vanilla, is that it, HUH?"
YES! WITH A BLINDING RAGING FURY! VANILLA IS RIDICULOUSLY OVERHYPED AND UNDER-FLAVORED AND OH, SO ELITE!! DEBATE ME YOU COWARD! WITH YOUR TINY LITTLE TOOTHPICKS AND YOUR ONE-DAY-A-YEAR FLOWERS!
I know without cognitive dissonance they'd have no cognitive at all, but their hero Elmo owns an ELECTRIC car company. Check out the comments below any article about electric cars (actually, don't, it's a dumpster fire) and you can see what right-wingers think of those sissy soy-boy electric cars, plus the fact that Joe Biden is FORCING you to buy one. Tesla, of course, has benefited hugely from SOCIALIST tax credits for the buyers of electric cars and Teslas are loved by the coastal elites including many HOLLYWOOD LIBERALS, but that's all cool, I guess, because Elmo is One Of Us, and can do no wrong.
This has been another installment in my continuing series on how this one opinion held by conservatives is not consistent with other other opinions held by conservatives, be sure to like and subscribe!
I just liked! When does my first mimeographed sheet show up at the PO Box?
If you own an e-car, the only coal you can roll is at the local power plant and what fun is that?
You forgot I AM NOT A CRANK
I AM NOT A CRANKSHAFT
Trying to hold back on the all-caps (you can see how well that's going) so as to save on mimeograph ink. Stuff's getting harder and harder to find these days, what with all the aging boomers huffing to take themselves back to their childhoods.
Keep trying – that stuff is worth it.
persnickety
I’m minded of the time I set out to dutifully watch Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog because more than one friend had recommended it.
It’s a slowwww movie, and the ambiguity of so many of the characters’ feelings and actions was irritating. Campion doesn’t spell anything out, you have to do your own work and you can never be sure you’ve “got it.”
So it was a little annoying and I still have lots of questions (Hey did I miss something? What are the rings the mother-in-law gives to the Kirsten Dunst character at the funeral… and why? Why was she SO unsettled by the Cumberbatch character from the jump? Was there a prior relationship? And so on.) The very definition of a movie that “makes you think.”
I was impatient for answers. Still want ‘em. Didn’t like the feeling of uncertainty. In the end I realized that even as she was chronicling the (puzzling) emotional evolution of the characters, she was laying the foundations of the “story.” You hardly even notice.
But. It all adds up. It’s a finely tuned accumulation to set up that mindblow of an ending. For me it was literally a jaw dropper—my mouth actually fell open when I “got it.”
I wish there was a way that I could talk about it without spoiling it, because it was just…perfect.
Alla yins (including Roy/excluding GM* – props!) missin' the point:
The person what gets paid to watch movies fer a living will see MANY more movies than possibly all y'all combined! Some of them are bound to be purty gud. When you don't know anything about what's on their list, it don't mean nothin'! That film writer prolly knows next to nothin' 'bout the best way to drop an engine and when you need to v. when you don't...but they're not draggin' on you mechanics.
The lack of awareness (alternately, the simple cussedness) of experts in one field who decline to give credit where due to experts in another field is widespread and to be deplored by all thinking persons**.
*Edited to add & SteveB, except his writing's kinda hard to pin down, so the jury, as they say in Canada, is still oot.
**Cue purported Adlai Stevenson quote here.
A few of the more prominent climate cranks are theoretical physicists, who just can't believe other people are smart and can figure stuff out. One guy claimed that climate scientists were calculating the average temperature of the earth incorrectly, because, you know, "average" is such a difficult mathematical concept that only theoretical physicists truly understand what it means. Anyway, the guy got a bunch of money to redo calculations that had already been done (but in his special theoretical-physicist way, I guess.) After about a year he shamefacedly had to admit that climate scientists did, in fact, know how to correctly calculate average. I suppose we should give him a participation trophy for being willing to admit he was horribly and comically wrong, that's how low I've set the bar these days.
I knew a duffer who was pretty good on the course when just playing for fun, but every time he entered a tournament it was as if he'd forgotten how to play. One of the tournament organizers felt so bad for him that she made up a custom prize for him alone.
You might see where this is going...
no?
C'mon, you can do this!
He got his very own Par Dissipation Trophy.
"C'mon, you can do this!"
Left unanswered is why I would want to.
Boy. Tough crowd.
This reminds me of an aquaintance (lawyer who drives a six-figure Range Rover) who once, during a light-hearted discussion of famous private detectives, was irritated that people were talking about Poirot, Maigret, Wallendar, etc., and not American dectectives. When invited to suggest his favorite American gumshoe, he didn't mention Philip Marlow or Travis McGee, but rather touted Thomas Magnum (Magnum PI) as a dectective Americans could identify with.
He couldn't even come up with Columbo?
I hope someone, as they exited that conversation, turned back and said, “Just one more thing, sir.”
This is a brilliant essay. I love wealthy conservatives accusing people and institutions of being "elite," braying that supporting abortion rights, universal healthcare, and higher taxes on billionaires is "elitist" when large majorities of the populace do just that. Irony abounds. Or maybe just bullshit. In this case, I want to ask them, in Dana Carvey's most accusatory Church Lady voice, "And who is it that made this 'Top Gun: Maverick' movie that has your loins all aflame, hmmmm? Was it........ HOLLYWOOD!!!?"
Musk is going to buy People magazine, put himself on the cover, and post on Twitter that this proves he's the most popular person in the world.
I keep waiting for all these me-o-centric fools to run out of energy defending lost or never-were causes, but their staunch resoluteness seems indefatigable. won't Elmo please take them all to Galt's gulch, which I hear is somewhere in the martian highlands?
I hope it’s near Clark Ashton Smith’s “Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,” and I hope that they find it.
"Mister we could use a man like Andrew Johnson again"
If I was a major Tesla/SpaceX stock holder, I'd be "hair on fire" mad right now. Everything he's doing screams "micromanager", which we knew that when we heard stories about Tesla's shoddy safety records, attributed to Musk's dislike of the color yellow. If he's got time to tweet all day, what the hell is he doing with his time?
So the world's richest micromanager fancies himself a movie critic? JFC let's hope he doesn't decide to purchase an airline, because jets will be falling out of the sky when he discovers that the pilots are just too "woke".
Yeah, I wondered, "Aren't you too busy fucking things up to be doing this?"