(no subject)
I saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower yesterday. They did a good job making a movie out of it, but overall it was a very depressing experience. I wonder how it would have been different, though, if we hadn't gone to the Big Corporate Theater to see it. Because maybe if we'd gone to the Manor, my ears wouldn't have been assaulted beforehand with this vomitous monstrosity...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV-7ebvpa7M
What are the multiple ways in which this song so deeply offends me, you may ask?
1. I'm so sick of retro shit. It's like people think the less original they are, the more awesome. I DISAGREE.
2. I hate old-timey shit anyway, and they pretty much nailed that annoying "roaring 20s" sound. This makes me see visions of crackly old black and white films of naughty flappers trying to vote.
3. I hate songs that tell me what to do.
4. I hate anything that promotes an empty, frantic "carpe diem" mentality. HURRY! ENJOY THE NOW!
5. I hate that stupid band name and all the band names like it and the current aesthetic that allows and encourages such crap to exist.
So right at that moment, it was like, "Here's everything you hate about 'your' culture in one cheesy, shitty, LOUD song! Enjoy!" all offered to me via that extra-phony announcer voice they use for the movie-theater-loudspeaker-pseudoradio.
Then I was off to see an anachronistic movie that reminded me of how anachronistic I am.
ok, so, .
First, who the hell was the target demographic for this movie?
There seem to be two possible options:
1) Kids These Days... meaning, people who are currently around the age of the main characters of the movie, OR
2) Me, and other people who were that age when the book came out in 1999.
It can't really be 1), 'cause The Kids These Days don't listen to any of the music featured in the film, and they don't make each other mix tapes anymore. Do they? No, surely not.
Seriously, how do kids (or, really, people in general) share music now? What's the preferred current method? I've seen the commercials that show the phones that can transfer playlists by having your phone kiss the other person's phone. Cute! But I don't think that's standard yet.
CDs are outdated, right?
What do you do, just hand someone a thumb drive? That's what I did last time. Or is that outdated now, too?
I guess you can use Sendspace or something. Personally, I've always found that process annoyingly cumbersome.
Really, this is a great mystery that plagues my mind even in the best of times, though having written all that out, I realize now that the problem isn't so much "I don't know how to do this" as, "There are too many options... which one?". And, of course, this isn't a practical problem so much as a reflection on how entirely out of touch I am with the consensus reality.
OR, do they just not bother to share music, because EVERYTHING THAT COMES OUT NOW IS COMPLETE CRAP *?
OR because no one has a long enough attention span anymore to make or listen to a mix?
"Dude. Check out ten seconds of this song! It's eh fuck it, wanna ride bikes?"
Probably no one calls each other "Dude" anymore either, though.
Duuuude.
2) It can't be me. Since I'm now in my 30s, and that's old enough to remember The Time Before The Internet, I'm pretty sure it's not possible that I'm anyone's target demographic anymore. Especially since I don't have or intend to have kids. If I did, I'd now be firmly in the Mommy Demographic, but no. Pretty sure I don't exist as far as Whoever is concerned.
Wait, no. Stoli still likes me! Adult MINUS kids EQUALS bigtime partier. right? Of course. Because what else would you do with your time?
Partyer?
Partyyear?
In further moviereviewishness,
- They changed the late-night dining venue from Big Boy to King's, ++authenticity!
- Gratiutous shots of Pittsburgh, of course.
- Great casting for Charlie, Sam, and Patrick. Poor casting for the dad, and paul rudd as the teacher ... that was supposed to be a good character? so, whatWHY??
- Emma Watson does a pretty good American accent. Good enough that I hardly thought about it the whole movie, and when I did, it was never because of something she was saying.
- A disproportionate number of people in this movie had green eyes.
*This is a thing where every week you can listen to twenty or so albums that have just been released. I comb this thing every week, which clearly is not the right method, because I generally find that almost all of it is horribly derivative SHITE and I rarely find something new that I'd want to actually listen to. Yet it's still really damn cool that this thing exists. At least I know what's coming out, which is cool.
I've just now realized what all this means... I'm not outdated, I'm retro.
Ugh... and now I've turned into a t-shirt you would find in the lillian vernon catalog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV-7ebvpa7M
What are the multiple ways in which this song so deeply offends me, you may ask?
1. I'm so sick of retro shit. It's like people think the less original they are, the more awesome. I DISAGREE.
2. I hate old-timey shit anyway, and they pretty much nailed that annoying "roaring 20s" sound. This makes me see visions of crackly old black and white films of naughty flappers trying to vote.
3. I hate songs that tell me what to do.
4. I hate anything that promotes an empty, frantic "carpe diem" mentality. HURRY! ENJOY THE NOW!
5. I hate that stupid band name and all the band names like it and the current aesthetic that allows and encourages such crap to exist.
So right at that moment, it was like, "Here's everything you hate about 'your' culture in one cheesy, shitty, LOUD song! Enjoy!" all offered to me via that extra-phony announcer voice they use for the movie-theater-loudspeaker-pseudoradio.
Then I was off to see an anachronistic movie that reminded me of how anachronistic I am.
ok, so, .
First, who the hell was the target demographic for this movie?
There seem to be two possible options:
1) Kids These Days... meaning, people who are currently around the age of the main characters of the movie, OR
2) Me, and other people who were that age when the book came out in 1999.
It can't really be 1), 'cause The Kids These Days don't listen to any of the music featured in the film, and they don't make each other mix tapes anymore. Do they? No, surely not.
Seriously, how do kids (or, really, people in general) share music now? What's the preferred current method? I've seen the commercials that show the phones that can transfer playlists by having your phone kiss the other person's phone. Cute! But I don't think that's standard yet.
CDs are outdated, right?
What do you do, just hand someone a thumb drive? That's what I did last time. Or is that outdated now, too?
I guess you can use Sendspace or something. Personally, I've always found that process annoyingly cumbersome.
Really, this is a great mystery that plagues my mind even in the best of times, though having written all that out, I realize now that the problem isn't so much "I don't know how to do this" as, "There are too many options... which one?". And, of course, this isn't a practical problem so much as a reflection on how entirely out of touch I am with the consensus reality.
OR, do they just not bother to share music, because EVERYTHING THAT COMES OUT NOW IS COMPLETE CRAP *?
OR because no one has a long enough attention span anymore to make or listen to a mix?
"Dude. Check out ten seconds of this song! It's eh fuck it, wanna ride bikes?"
Probably no one calls each other "Dude" anymore either, though.
Duuuude.
2) It can't be me. Since I'm now in my 30s, and that's old enough to remember The Time Before The Internet, I'm pretty sure it's not possible that I'm anyone's target demographic anymore. Especially since I don't have or intend to have kids. If I did, I'd now be firmly in the Mommy Demographic, but no. Pretty sure I don't exist as far as Whoever is concerned.
Wait, no. Stoli still likes me! Adult MINUS kids EQUALS bigtime partier. right? Of course. Because what else would you do with your time?
Partyer?
Partyyear?
In further moviereviewishness,
- They changed the late-night dining venue from Big Boy to King's, ++authenticity!
- Gratiutous shots of Pittsburgh, of course.
- Great casting for Charlie, Sam, and Patrick. Poor casting for the dad, and paul rudd as the teacher ... that was supposed to be a good character? so, whatWHY??
- Emma Watson does a pretty good American accent. Good enough that I hardly thought about it the whole movie, and when I did, it was never because of something she was saying.
- A disproportionate number of people in this movie had green eyes.
*This is a thing where every week you can listen to twenty or so albums that have just been released. I comb this thing every week, which clearly is not the right method, because I generally find that almost all of it is horribly derivative SHITE and I rarely find something new that I'd want to actually listen to. Yet it's still really damn cool that this thing exists. At least I know what's coming out, which is cool.
I've just now realized what all this means... I'm not outdated, I'm retro.
Ugh... and now I've turned into a t-shirt you would find in the lillian vernon catalog.