2 posts tagged “belle and sebastian”
When will you realize it doesn't pay
To be smarter than teachers, smarter than most boys?
[...]It can't get worse than this.
'Cause you'll soon be old enough to leave them
Without a notion of a care
You'll leave two fingers in the air
To linger there.
-Belle and Sebastian, Lord Anthony
I've been reading Equus in order to get a better grasp on all of this naked Dan Radcliffe hype (and to, you know, up my literature IQ),
But, although I'm only on the start of Act II, Shaffer is doing a fairly good job addressing a strange issue. I the play lacking in depth in terms of character, sometimes, but I suppose I am just used to authors handing me these sort of things on silver platters. Perhaps i'm underestimating myself altogether. I'll update again once I've finished the play, hopefully.
Moving on... we had to write a piece discussing our "cultural milieu" for English, so I came up with (what else) a satire (keep in mind I haven't proofread it yet):
Ruin
Or: How the Media is Keeping me from Impressing Boys
Kurt Vonnegut once made the apt observation that “we are what we pretend to be.” Few people are willing to accept this point, lest their carefully crafted facades crack upon the public’s discovery of their fraudulence. I, however, feel it necessary to uncover my true identity for, as Napoleon said, “It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.” While this is most certainly not the death I would have chosen, I feel it pertinent to expose a faction of society (of which I am a part of) that has long been discriminated against: pseudo-intellectuals.
My kind is slowly withering and dying with the proliferation of tabloid culture and E! specials. How can I continue to pretend to be an intellectual if all people care about is popular culture‽ I don’t know if you’ve realized, but it’s nearly impossible to slip Kierkegaard quotes into a conversation about Tara Reid’s breasts. It’s a true travesty that the world has become so concerned with celebutantes the likes of Cory Kennedy that it leaves no place for pretentious douchebags like yours truly to flex their holier-than-thou muscles. Par example:
Me: I read this really interesting article in the Times yesterday on—
Media Sponge I: I know! I can’t believe Anna Nicole Smith was murdered! I mean like, I totally knew it would happen, but I’m still really shocked!
Me: No, that’s not really what—
Eavesdropping Media Sponge II: (whips around) What? Anna Nicole Smith was murdered? Oh my god! I can’t believe it! This is almost as bad as when Britney Spears didn’t feed her kid for three days!
Me: Wait, what? When did—
Unnecessarily Loud Media Sponge III: NO WAY! That was totally worse! Like I can’t even think of anything worse except for maybe when David Hasselhoff grew a third—
ME: Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower! (silence)
Not only is the media thwarting my attempts to appeal to the lower rungs of the intelligence spectrum, but the increasing mass appeal of “higher-level” reading such as The New York Times is saturating the market with real intellectuals. The presence of these scholars is further ruining my chances of appearing to be a unique, intelligent, worldly individual. I can’t brag about having superficially read works by Camus, Kafka, Molière, and Chekhov when every intellectual with opposable thumbs is blogging about the existential quandaries L’Etranger sparked in them.
It’s not only current events and literature that are being taken away from my people; perhaps if it was simply that, I would have kept quiet. But the growth of independent print and online magazines such as Spill, JPG, and N.E.E.T. have allowed more people than ever to access obscure music, art, and fashion than ever before. Few realize that a large part of the job of a pretend intellectual is to be informed enough about the indie scene so as to impress others with one’s knowledge of it. Alas![1] I can longer even cryptically quote songs on my AIM away message without someone recognizing them:
boxesandboxesof: hey charline
Auto response from sovvviet kitsch:
When will you realize it doesn't pay
To be smarter than teachers, smarter than most boys?
"So shut your mouth, start kicking the football."[2]
boxesandboxesof: ooh, belle & sebastian! I love them!!
sovvviet kitsch: Yeah, uh, they’re pretty good.
boxesandboxesof: I really wanna see them live!!
Auto response from sovvviet kitsch:
If you're wondering why
All the love that you long for eludes you
And people are rude and cruel to you
I'll tell you why
You just haven't earned it yet, baby[3]
boxesandboxesof: Moz!!
You understand the importance of this issue, don’t you? Just think about it: what would the world be without teenage and twentysomething pseudo-intellectual like me running around and blowing cigarette smoke in your face? Wouldn’t you miss hearing irrelevant references to MOMA exhibits and Beethoven’s 9th symphony in the Starbucks line? If you are any sort of civil rights advocate, you’ll realize the danger of the situation. If we let the media ruin the lives of pseudo-intellectuals with the spread of daft tabloids, high-culture newspapers, and independent magazines, what will stop it from going farther? Let this stand as a precedent to all future discrimination! But most importantly, “the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.”[4]
[1] T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, of course. Are you impressed?
[2] Belle and Sebastian’s Lord Anthony. How about now??
[3] The Smiths’ You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby. No?
[4] Nothing? Not even an ooh? How about a little clap? Guys? Guys…?
I am sure you would all sooner jump off of a building than hear about my 2,000 word paper on T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" (although some masochistic part of me is enjoying writing it), so here's some musica:
What song are you obsessed with right now?
I just discovered something more than slightly disconcerting! First off, Crispin Glover has always scared the holy bejeezus out of me, ever since I saw him in Back to the Future Part I. He just looks like the kind of skeevy greaseball who would pull up to you in a crowded bar and breath in your face with his vodka stained mouth. (Apparently I've thought about this more than I realized.) In any case, I was searching for some T.S. Eliot stuff for that paper of mine, and accidentally clicked images, and realized:
= 
This is one of those times where I can only sum up my thoughts adequately in an emoticon:
