Tuesday, 20 June 2006

You YouTube? 'Cause Now I YouTube Too.

For the first time in my life "next September" won't involve sitting in or standing before a classroom.  I've taken all the deep breaths I can short of hyperventilating and am still a little unsettled by the thought.  'Cause quarter-century habits die hard.  Expect little intellectual from these parts until I catch my breath. 

Here's some entertainment instead.  I browsed YouTube for the first time tonight and learned stuff:

  1. Tom Waits doesn't want to grow up, but in about 5 minutes he'll be so full of bourbon he can't stand up and someone'll convince him to endorse meat.
  2. The Replacements are young bastards.  Children by the million scream for Alex Chilton but slum along with Paul on The Skyway.
  3. Leonard Cohen renews his neurotic affiliation with Canada, proves he's as beautiful man as he is a loser and told you when he came in 1967 he was a stranger.
  4. Neko implores you to hold on.  Maybe the sparrow can explain why she reminds me of Johnette.
  5. Will someone please give Mr. Tweedy a shot in the arm? 
  6. Wanna play in the Bronx?  You'll have to cut your hair before they'll bring on the major leagues. 
  7. I will get tenure.  I have my very own official ironman rally song.  If that fails, well, I'm not afraid to use my valuable hunting knife.  'Course then I'll have to start a new life.  But I say you take these things head on or not at all.
Jun 20, 2006 11:13:25 PM | Academia, Books, Dissertation, Evolution, Literary Journalism, Literary Theory, Literature, Philosophy

1 Comment

The Little Womedievalist

You know, the Canadian was right... The Arcade Fire can't help but rock it something fierce when performing live. There are also some great John Renbourn covers that will allow me to figure out the man's fingering on so many of the songs I've been wanting to see for years...even if they're played by some fifty-year-old guy in glasses, sitting on his bed of uninspired reproduction. (I have to wonder...does YouTube have any covers/instructional videos for Leo Kottke tunes?) Yup...There goes my summer.

Posted by: The Little Womedievalist | Thursday, 22 June 2006 at 11:20 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Why Buffy Is Funny, Family Guy Isn't, and Warren Ellis Is Capable of So Much More Parody requires more than a fine idea. Take my recent "Fuck Act Theory" posts. In addition to being funny on its face, the parody works because of its consonance with actual "Speech Act Theory." The focus on marriage as a spoken contract jibes with centuries of thought about the necessity of consummating a marriage. Now do you see why it's funny? What aren't you laughing already. Some people. Anyhow, I write this not to toot my horn. For shame! Thinking this further evidence of my penchant for self-promotion. I'm writing because this afternoon I finished a disappointing Star Trek parody. Here's the idea: Ray Winstone is an excellent British actor who tends to play working-class London psychotics. Even when he's the good guy, he's usually fucking terrifying. Only once in (my) recent memory has he played against type in film, as the second safecracker in Sexy Beast. See, everyone first saw Ray Winstone as a teenager whipping other kids to death with a pool ball in a sock, screaming WHO'S THE DADDY NOW!! WHO'S THE FUCKING DADDY NOW! I'M THE DADDY NOW! He's a force of nature, a thing driven by beer and cigarettes and kicking fucking heads in. He's got a chubby face and little boy's eyes that, in the moment, go black and dead like shark's eyes. Reduces London English to a series of grunts and yelps. He is, in fact, the Greatest Living Londoner. And the whole thing unfurled as a I spoke, like a flag that someone has wiped on their arse first. Insisting on smoking on the bridge. Ray Winstone has to have his fags (which in Britain means "cigarettes"—it's the first term we purge from our vocabulary when we travel to America). And beer. "Have one of our futuristic blue drinks with no alcohol, sir?" "Fuck off. Fucking pint, son. Right fucking now." That standard Star Trek moment when somone asks the captain if they can go now, and spouts some techno-bollocks at him about how the course is set and all that. "Well fucking go on then, son. Twat." So says the vibrating Warren Ellis—now obliged to never change his banner lest I look the fool—in the introductory material to Switchblade Honey. The book's damn funny but ain't much of a book. Barely a parody even.* Why bad mouth one of my favorite writers? Because I've picked up the habit of beating bloody anyone who fails to live up to the expectations they've created. (Have you read nothing I've written about left homophobia and misogyny? Preoccupied pisser.) I'm increasingly convinced that my dissatisfaction—nay, my inability to find funny the decontextualized "humor" of Family Guy and The Simpsons comes from the inexhaustive parroting of the object of their derision. What do I mean? All the jokes are single shooters. Funny or not they don't move the plot forward. They're minimally contextualized absurdisms whose import disappears the moment they're off-screen. Which is fine. Dandy even. But it guarantees the show will be no more than...
PREVIOUS POST
Commonplace—Ideal Bathtub Companions Dorothy Parker from Constant Reader, 1927-1933: Anyway, there is this to be said of Professor Phelp's Happiness. It is second only to a rubber duck as the ideal bathtub companion. It may be held in the hand without causing muscular fatigue or nerve strains, it may be neatly balanced back of the faucets, and it may be read through before the water has cooled. And if it slips down the drain pipe, all right, it slip down the drain pipe. When I was a teacher—all of last week ago—I used this paragraph as an example of how you can effectively violate the "laws" of grammar. Back in the day I would stress how one must internalize such laws before one breaks them, and students always reacted favorably to Parker's masterful comma splices. They convinced themselves that they too could be the ones who were the ones who did it well. Some of them even were.

Scott Eric Kaufman

The Typepad Team

Search

Become a Fan

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments