I apologize for the lack of material, but I have my excuses ... erm, reasons. The close of Ringette season coincided with the Stanley Cup playoffs. Sadly, my daughter's playoff hopes were in line with Buffalo's. Of course, the up-side to this is fewer games, less driving, etc. Nevertheless, as with Buffalo players, our family has been dealing with disappointment.
The arrival of spring has also brought about the latest crop of funerals. Thankfully none of these deaths have been from my closest circle of family and friends, but they still require physical and emotional attendance.
I hope to get typing soon, but in the meantime here are a few links that have provided me some amusement:
"The age of the singular critical voice is ending -- people prefer the wisdom of a community." So says Patrick Goldstein in a clear-eyed, non-hysterical appraisal of the current critical environment here. "The wisdom of a community" -- I rather like that, even as I lament the disappearance of the platforms that once gave voice to people like Pauline Kael and David Ansen.
Egad -- is the future of Rock 'n' Roll truly heritage acts? Follow the money and find out. Both links via ALD.
Meanwhile, Metallica and Henry Rollins are putting in appearances to bolster Record Store Day, this Saturday. I don't suppose either of them qualifies as a heritage act ... yet.
Speaking of critics and heritage acts, here's Anthony Lane on the latest Rolling Stones cash-grab: "Can you, or should you, forge a movie from a cluster of hot images, and nothing else? I watched this film at an IMAX cinema, and, believe me, there are better things for a throbbing head than a fifty-foot-high enlargement of Ronnie Wood." Theirs is an act whose entertainment value bottomed out for me some 20 years ago, so even though this is ostensibly a Martin Scorsese film I will not be in the audience. Hm. After taking a look at the tomatometer, I do believe I am more firmly on side with Lane's singular critical voice than I am with the community. Whodathunk?
I know we've had a vacuum of "Young (or even old) Angry Young Men" for a while now. Your mentioning of Henry Rollins got me to thinking of that old adage of "matter, any matter taking up the vacuum caused by a disappearance of substance". Don't know about you, WP, but Mr. Rollins, for me at least, qualifies as the any matter kind of guy. I've never seen him live but I have seen various dvd's of his performances of his act and, frankly, I don't get what the buzz has been or is of him. Aside from being a self-involved puffed-up seemingly (and I say this because it all seems to be an act for me) angry kind of guy whose shtick is making horse-blindered self-mirrored observations of the world as It Seems to Him while inserting F-bombs and "man" in his monologues, I don't get what he adds to The Conversation. His humour is without wit, metaphor, or even satire. He talks LOUDLY as if Volume connotes Wisdom. He flexes aged muscles when pondering a point of diminishing cogitative return. Worst of all, he preens and cocks on stage as if he truly believes his vision is unique, rather than old and jaded.
ReplyDeleteIn one of his performances, filmed in NYC, he gets downright insulting to his audience because they can't seem to appreciate his mind's ability to dance a humeresque while in flight from the States to New Zealand. Panning the audience, the camera reveals the horror on some of his audience's faces as they try to deal with the hellish eternity it must have been parked next to this guy on such a long flight.
Listening to Mr. Rollins must be a taste of what a visit to one of Dante's infamous Inferno rings must be.
Oh, Rollins is a gasbag, no doubt about it. Not having watched an entire solo performance, I'm probably not the best authority to consult on his appeal. But near as I can figure, his 90s-shtick was popular to the suburban divorce bunch because he stood up as an uber-survivor: crappy childhood, a murder attempt, and various other unpleasant interruptions.
ReplyDeleteThat, and Black Flag, of course.