May 01
If you feel the need to feign a vibrato, you may as well become a professional air guitarist.
Unfortunately, this was a nuance amongst many others that was lost on the hopelessly pretentious members of a band named ‘Moonraker’ tonight. I guess I should have put two and two together when I noticed that both the Boston Globe and Boston Herald presented positive reviews of them. Nevertheless, I suspended my disbelief and forked out the cover charge to go see this supposedly ‘hip’ show.
The opening act, ‘The So & So’s’ performed a melange of pandering commercial ballads and cliche ‘angry girl music’. At least they were honest about it. For that sole reason, their set attracted a sizable crowd of vapid overgrown teenie-boppers.
But then ‘Moonraker’ took the stage and the mass exodus began. I have never seen, to date, so many people walk out in the middle of a set as I did tonight. They had good reason to do so.
By combining the worst of Portishead vocals, mediocre prog-rock keyboard fills and generic electronic cheese, this hapless quintet created an utterly insipid and uninspiring sonic aura. The female vocals were exhaustingly invariant and the guitar sounded like a token overdub thrown in for no good reason. I was bored to tears.
Note to self: In future, be more diligent in your research before going to a show.
Apr 26
Writing late at night is the best feeling ever. Emerging from a drug induced stupor, you grasp at those last vestiges of inspiration, compelling you to quickly enunciate your thoughts on the flickering screen of your computer. My inspiration comes from a variety of sources; the magazine I was reading, Pat Methany playing in the background; the usual hubbub that happens in my house on a rainy Sunday evening.
What sparked me to electronically scribble down these thoughts was my somewhat hazy recollection of a TV5 (French channel) News broadcast. Perhaps I had stumbled across the “International” section of the show (my French comprehension is, admittedly, shaky), but for the full 10 minutes that I watched, both stories tackled international issues. AIDS and disease in Africa and the recent explosion in North Korea. Presenting the facts of the story, some analysis and some shocking footage (emaciated children and a town leveled are pretty intense images), the French program did justice to the notion that things out there are damn right scary.
It’s fitting then when I switch on CNN earlier today, that I witness a completely different approach to news. Now I was greeted with tales of human courage, of the Michael Jackson trial, of the latest on the Atkins Diet. People often have an image of an ignorant American population, unaware of world events. A sample of this “leading” news network clearly lends credence to that claim.
But I’m not saying that American airwaves are filled with shlock. OK, let me rephrase that: What little space set aside for quality programming produces an excellent array of information and entertainment. If I wanted to watch a documentary on the life of some ancient Egyptian high priest, I could.
Eventually what you have is choice (and a wide range for that matter). We are free to select either a mind-numbing piece of garbage or an intellectually stimulating broadcast. When watching the dregs of TV-shows, a sense of guilty pleasure washes over us, as we are both intrigued and revolted by whatever is enacted on our boob-tubes. When the latest live telecast of the 9/11 Commission is on every news channel, we are gripped with an intense desire to seek out the truth.
Who knows what the next generation of television programming bring us? Our children? Our children’s children?
Apr 19
“Hypocrite, Opportunist, don’t infect me with your poison.”
-Thom Yorke, from Punch up at a Wedding
In his indictment of society’s collective dyslexia, Nick brings up the important topic of fallacious arguments. “Name Calling”, a classic case of the Ad Hominem fallacy is perhaps the most rampant in all societies. One only needs to open a newspaper or any other form of popular media to be inundated with instances of it.
Currently, meaningless one-liners like “axis of evil” or “rogue state” seem to be particularly popular examples. Worryingly, these and other such nonsense are often propogated by what is foolishly considered to be the ‘Intelligentsia’….a distinguished graduate of Harvard Business School in the above examples.
Of course, this sensationalist garbage gets lapped up by millions of undiscerning media-consumers who need only a handful of trite catch-phrases upon which to base their entire philosophies on life. Proponents of insightful writing and journalism, take heed: The seemingly endless ‘spectacle’ that Nick refers to is in its golden age.
As I pondered this topic last night, I came to appreciate the fact that only a minute minority have the chance to learn basic epistemology or linguistics and thereby familiarize themselves with such pitfalls of language. It would probably take a Herculean leap in global education standards even to get the average college graduate to know and understand the meanings of the two words. So, in the mean time, we should perhaps just try to teach people to be civil.
According to a body of research documented at the following website, empathy-inducing drugs would help.
http://www.biopsychiatry.com
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