Oh, wow! Really? I had no idea that we were talking about true painting royalty!
You may face a veritable shitstorm over the comment on philosophy, but they, like space travel and physics are all keys on finding out who we are and how we got here.
That’s another thing about a lot of these lists, though. Sometimes it’s a matter of one person either not “getting it” (the convenient excuse, especially for people that are pro-whateveritis) or just simply not relating to it. There’s really no shame in other, and different people like different things. I’m cool with differences.
By the way, a lot of network TV goes over my head. It could be that American Idol and Grey’s Anatomy just simply aren’t geared towards me.
Since we’re in confession mode, I have to admit that I can’t read poetry. I don’t mind listening to it, sometimes, but in terms of reading it myself I might as well be blind. It’s completely over my head.
Also, I’ve never been able to finish any work by Dickens.
And I can’t stand Delacroix’s “Liberty Guiding the People”.
Less the novel and more the use of stream of consciousness. It’s just not my favorite writing technique (see also The Sound and the Fury). I should have added Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness, as well.
Can’t stand Leo Tolstoy. I’ve tried to get through his books and fallen asleep snoring over each one.
Can’t stand Virginia Woolf, either, or Kate Chopin. I’ve tried to work my way through Kafka, but my brain usually ends up dribbling out of my ears…
Hunter S. Thompson. Have never been able to get more than two chapters into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Ditto on Mrs. Dalloway.
And I’ll go one further and say The Hours (the film version). I guess I am afraid of Virginia Woolf. (Though incidentally, that play/film I find to be very enjoyable.)
I always thought Death of Marat was bitchin’
I guess he was sincere then, but still, it doesn’t make sense to me.
Insofar as art is a form of expression, I think it fails if it requires (or is wholly dependent upon) attendant explanation of what I’m supposed to be seeing, thinking, feeling when I look at the work
It certainly shows skill in both natural and romantic shading, but there’s something I don’t like about it. I guess the placement and angles of the objects in the painting is just too distracting from the material: it doesn’t really draw your eye to the death.
I never disliked the painting and I still can’t quite place why I don’t like it. I guess this can count as my Art Confession.
I’m another “doesn’t get into Radiohead” person, but I have a workable theory as to why; I think that Radiohead is one of those bands that sounds really impressive and interesting to people that don’t listen to anything more challenging than standard rock music, but sounds completely boring if you listen to stuff that’s far weirder and denser on a daily basis. I’m sure Kid A is totally mindblowing if you’ve never listened to electronic music, and Ok Computer is totally craaaazy if you’ve never listened to Magazine or something like that.
I wish the band would get back to writing songs, which they haven’t really done since The Bends ( a great record!).
Yeah, I kind of felt that after that album, they left us hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. You know, despite our pleadings to the contrary.
I’ll go with “Taming of the Shrew.”
And Shaw wrote better plays, anyway. My fave Shaw play is not “Pygmalion” it’s “Man and Superman.”
How about modern dance? As a true dance lover in all its forms, I just don’t get modern dance. Butcher beautiful classical pieces to make your own so-called “vision”?
Yes, I do take it a little personally. Why do you ask?
My people!
I like a lot of poetry… Emily Dickinson, Audre Lord, Langston Hughes. But the stuff that passes for “spoken word” nowadays? Pretentious, poser crap. I get that pulsing vein in my forehead when Def Poetry Jam comes on. Every emo kid thinks they have something to say worth sharing. Truth is, most of us just aren’t that interesting outside our own heads. So shut the fuck up already and stop torturing the public!
Except for Beau Sia and Mos Def. Those cats definitely can rhyme and flow.
I agree with VCO3 about post-The Bends Radiohead. Shame really, because they had what Oasis had for a few years, only with the creativity to keep it going. Jonny Greenwood could have been the next great British guitar hero. They have a new album out, I don’t even notice. (Though I think “There There” from Hail to the Thief was a great single.) Amnesiac and Kid A were complete crap.
Never got the Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits love. Shut the fuck up, the both of you! Dylan, I get. And his voice isn’t bad on some of his songs… and his songs sung by other artists are brilliant. I had a friend slip me a Leonard Cohen tribute album with artists I like, such as R.E.M., and I thought it was absolute shite.
Ah. That certainly will turn some people off. I completely understand.
“Radiohead completely changed the face of rock music. They made everyone re-evaluate just what music was and is. It came from another planet.”
I’ve heard some form of that for as long as I have known about indie music. And it would have been true. Would have, if Radiohead existed in 1965. But really, completely changed rock music? How? Made some slightly esoteric stuff a more viable option for song writers? Maybe. Just don’t get it…
I don’t have a clue as to why John Waters has a fan base.
It’s not because his films are good. It’s not even because his films suck, a la Ed Wood. It is because, if you can endure Pink Flamingos, you want to tell the entire world that you sat through every part. People who want other people to realize how much they can endure visually clump together like grass on a dog shit stick and it snow balls from there.
Anaamika, I seem to be one person who truly like modern dance. Ever been to a real performance? That may or may not color your perception of such. I’ve seen a high school - albeit an arts high school - performance, and it bordered on crap. I went to a Limon production and was completely enthralled.
I find comments like that hilarious, because the bands who really did change the face of rock music did it without alienating three-quarters of the audience. I remember reading an interview with Jonny Greenwood where he said he asked fans to send him the weirdest, most obscure chord fingerings. That’s not how you change music. The 'Head are clearly very talented musicians who are just smart enough to really do innovative things, but a little too clever for their own good. Remember how U2 and The Smiths changed the face of rock music? People actually enjoyed it as it happened!
Radiohead lost the plot, which is a shame really, because they really could have changed rock music. All the pretentious gits I know who have Kid A or Amnesiac rave about it, but I rarely see them playing it. Now, I can’t go more than a few weeks without hearing XTC’s Black Sea or The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder. Those albums sound like they came from another planet, but not the least bit pretentious. I think they were a little afraid of becoming U2 Mk II and took the oddball route.
Actually, i think one of the problems is that too many people seem to believe that Pink Flamingos constitutes the entirety of John Waters’ oeuvre, and that gross site gags are his only contribution to film. I don’t expect everyone to like him—and i don’t like all his work—but much of the criticism appears to rest more of his reputation and on a few particularly famous scenes than on any familiarity with his whole body of work.