oh man, why does blogger not work when i want it to.
posted by rob at 2:17 PM [edit]

So I just noticed a really unsettling new development to my whole Amazon account. In addition to the previously discussed Gold Box, I now have a whole new tab entitled "Your [i.e., Rob's] Lifestyle." This is pretty scary. By clicking on it, Amazon's super-Hal computers come up with this whole holistic lifestyle portrait based on my purchases and give me reccomendations on what to buy based on three global activities: Work, Home, and Play. Based on my most recent purchase of a book, and Joy Division and Beck CD's, it gives me really bourgeois, yuppie items that kind of alarm me. In Home, for instance, it gives me wine guides, bottle openers, and a cookbook from Nobu, the famed NYC sushi joint. In Play, there's an entire section on Health, with really insidious subcategories like "Ab-Solutely Fabulous" (read: ab exercisers, though we all know I don't need that!), and "Project: You" (which contains a further delineated sub-category called "Thinking Positively" (which, again, well all know I don't need any help with...). Also in Play, in the "Grow your Library" fetishistic lists, it gives me what they think my lifestyle calls for: a couple of Derrida books and critiques of Derrida, a German hermeneutics reader, and a couple of more 'literary' books by Harold Bloom.

I think this is some kind of society of kids consuming itself and its materialsim alive...oh wait, no, it's just unsettling.
posted by rob at 4:57 PM [edit]

My theory is the following: all these lame, talentless types have constructed and bought into a metaphysical notion that "independent" somehow carries with it a certain ontological "authenticity": i.e. the aesthetic is inherently, organically, more valuable artistically because it is independent. Though, in reality, "independent" is more and more a euphimism for shitty. There is no reason why a big-budget aesthetic, even with a star cast, is any less valuable if it is a good film: simply watch, for example, "The Royal Tannenbaums." I'm proposing talentless hacks with no budget, no crew, and no vision call their "films" "self-produced," while we save the term "independent" for actual films made on a budget that aspire to something approaching critical and financial success, like "Boys Don't Cry," or even the most blatantly overrated film of the year "In the Bedroom" (which by the way, is just a fancy movie just a tad better than any movie on Lifetime TV after 8 PM. These kinds of movies made by actors pat themselves on the back for heaping the screen with ponderous, unwritten scenes where actors "display their craft." I can't think of anything I'd rather watch less. All the supposed "tension" and "emotional crisis" that was built up in the first hour and a half of that movie was immediately undermined by the "dramatic" ending: are we really to believe that the suffering father moved to tears by the treehouse suddenly decides to murder the murderer to save his faltering marriage? This is the type of "resolution" actors think is really profound, but anyone with half a brain thinks is really mindless and easy.)

Whew...now that I've gotten that out of the way: Halle Berry was abysmal. How could anyone put up with her crap? "Now that I've won this award for a film no one saw, let me vindicate models-turned-actresses everywhere and enter the Pantheon of all the Great black people, ever...such as Dr. Martin Luther King, and, er, Will Smith (the whitest black man at the Oscars)."
posted by rob at 2:33 PM [edit]

side a

i fought the law - the clash
viscious - lou reed
heroes - david bowie
dry the rain - the beta band
sorrow - david bowie
spanish bombs - the clash
love burns - black rebel motorcycle club


side b

ice hockey hair - super furry animals

posted by rob at 3:06 PM [edit]

a categorical rejection of just about everything.

in need of rejection: stasis, acceleration, smugness, grouping, categories/categorization, apolitics, simplicity, hyperretro, trainspotting, jadedness, marxism, socialism, industrialism, structuralism and its discontents, the avantgarde, e-commerce, marketing, advertising, "club culture," "dj culture," indie everything, uncritical politics.
posted by rob at 2:02 PM [edit]

so i've been inspired by petch's amazing website (i dont' have the link handy, i will have to put it up soon). i realized while reading his that there is no real point to blogging in any coherence, or rather, the process of blogging is the point, there is no point beyond it. the medium is the message? well, let's not get that deep.

i am flying to williamstown tommorrow afternoon to attend a funeral. if i were a true and worthy blogger, i would indicate whose funeral this was and why and how upsetting the process is, but because i fear someone besides petch might someday read this, and not don dellilo, then i choose not to write the details. needless to say, it is not the way and time i intended to return to williamstown. not under these circumstances that is.
posted by rob at 4:15 PM [edit]

"...Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we need them,
we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is
where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion,
earthquakes, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these
disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves
whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style.
This alone warrants their doom...We not only enjoy seeing them punished
for their relaxed life-style and progressive social ideals but we know
we're not missing anything. The cameras are right there. They're
standing by. Nothing terrible escapes their scrutiny."

Don DeLillo
posted by rob at 5:42 PM [edit]