I’ve been watching various episodes of the classic series The Shock of the New, that thirty years ago covered the development of modern art over eight one-hour episodes. In the video above, from around 25:20 to 28:20 is perhaps my favourite three minutes of TV this year – the message feels just as relevant now as I imagine it did then, perhaps even more so. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.
“Take, for example, an ad that calls itself an ad, makes fun of its own format, and attempts to lure its target market to laugh at and with it. It pre-emptively acknowledges its own failure to accomplish anything meaningful. No attack can be set against it, as it has already conquered itself. The ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism. The same goes for ironic living. Irony is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, aesthetic and otherwise. To live ironically is to hide in public. It is flagrantly indirect, a form of subterfuge, which means etymologically to “secretly flee” (subter + fuge). Somehow, directness has become unbearable to us.”
How to Live Without Irony, Christy Walpole, New York Times
“Isn’t there supposed to be an irony, some grim humor, some sense of the peculiar human insistence on seeing past the larger madness into small and skewed practicalities, into off-shaded moments that help us consider a narrow hope?”
…because the internet needs yet another site streaming the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor album (even though you can go out and buy it now) and a quotation from the Guardian interview transcript. Read the rest of this entry »
Man V Food is a wonderful TV show. For the uninitiated: the eponymous Man, Adam Richman, travels around America visiting various restaurants and eating holes, with each episode culminating with him taking on a particular establishment’s eating challenge. The challenge tends to revolve one of two themes – either eating a lot of food, or eating something that is incredibly hot. On rare occasions the challenge incorporates elements of both. Read the rest of this entry »
The Art of Fielding is quite a lovely, comforting book. In many ways it was the perfect holiday read this summer. In many ways it should have been my perfect book – easy-to-read mid-brow fare, feted by the likes of Jonathan Franzen, giving some sort of insight into the human condition, and fundamentally all about baseball. And yet something was lacking, something wasn’t quite right. Read the rest of this entry »
Wait until next year 