I agree he's overrated, but I wouldn't say I hate his work. His dramas, save for Hamlet which is at least tolerable, are shit in my opinion. They're basically soap operas. His comedies I don't mind basically because they're dirty as all hell. I guess dick and fart jokes are timeless. I don't find his poetry to be all that groundbreaking or beautiful though as many will assert. If anything, dude was a sap. Twelfth Night, Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream are a good time just for the sheer ridiculousness of them. I don't know how to say this without sounding condescending, but following it was never a problem. Sure, it takes maybe 3 times longer to read and some good concentration, but the stories are pretty straight forward. On focus, and I bet I'll catch flak for this, but Game of Thrones. Great art direction, I'll give it that. Slow developing, convoluted and wholly uninteresting is how I would describe the plot. Maybe it comes off better in the books, but I'm not going to invest my time in a multi-volume fantasy epic. I did watch the whole season, I'll give it that as well, but I did so begrudgingly and by the end I was just hoping those barbarian types just killed everybody else to stop them from whining. I will not be watching next season.
Wha-? I got no defense for Woody Allen movies. I could take them or leave them. Which Monty Python movie did you watch where going in you thought it was supposed to be poignant? I don't think those two should be lumped together where the only thing they have in common is that you don't think they're funny. I will give you that. If people have been telling you that Monty Python movies are supposed to be deep and meaningful, then they are pretentious and full of bullshit. They're just silly, and I understand that some people don't get that. FOCUS: The last season of The West Wing.
And another one... I don't think the band, Nirvana, was nearly as good as people make it out to be. Something I agree with another board member on is that they became a lot more popular after he blew his head off. People call them one of the greatest bands of all time. I say, fuck them.
Chuck Berry only has about five different songs. Sure, they're great songs and he's incredibly influential, but the guy barely has even an entire album's worth of songs that aren't rehashes of one another. Compare, for example, the opening of "Johnny B Goode" with "Back in the USA." And then compare it to "Roll Over Beethoven."
Along those lines: The Simpsons. I had the opportunity to meet one of the writers (Mike Reiss...he was there for the early seasons when it was still funny). He mentioned how some schools offered "Philosophy of The Simpsons" courses, and then poked fun of said schools. There is no deeper, philosophical meaning behind it. It's just supposed to be humorous.
Unfortunately, this hasn't been my experience. I have heard those books raved about and defended by people over the age of 21. And it isn't isolated to Oklahoma. I dealt with this stuff in New Mexico and now Kansas. Jodi Picoult is on a teacher's suggested reading list here. I think it is because the average American doesn't read much and they never develop a critical attitude towards anything they are reading. Is it fun? Did it make me feel good? Did I finish it? Welp, it's a great book. And how do you convince a person that Twilight would do society a greater service if it was used as toilet paper? You can't until they challenge themselves a tiny bit and read something better. Hell, sometimes the authors of books don't realize that their work isn't exactly up to snuff. Here is a snippet from a Nicholas Sparks interview: Yeah, Dear John is up there with those. Well, I will give him Jane Austen. And a new one that I was just reminded of: Glee People say this show makes them want to sing. It makes me want to rip out my fingernails. I tried sitting through an episode whenever the show first became popular. It was trite and melodramatic. It came on the t.v tonight and with this thread in mind I decide to give it another shot. That was a dumb idea. I made it to the second commercial break. We are going to sing songs about acceptance and Gaga is the queen of self-love blah fucking blah. The glee club is represented by all races, religions, creeds, colors, and cliques and you all love each other, but you haven't learned to love yourselves. I know understand why there is a waiting period to buy a handgun.
Lamaze classes for pregnant women are an utter crock of shit. Do you think a woman is cool and relaxed and counting and focusing when there's a living watermelon-sized object coarsing through her body and delivering torso-shattering agony? FUCK YOU. You teach them so you can welch money from unsuspecting first timers, that's what you do. And now kids, some fun facts about Scientology: Fact: Scientology was founded in the early 1950s in New Jersey by L. Ron Hubbard, A SCIENCE-FICTION AUTHOR. They believe that 75 million years ago, the evil Conederate galactic Lord Xenu (sounds like a villain from a Roger Corman movie) banished the evil Thetans to earth in spaceships that look a little bit like Boeing aircraft. These ships were stacked around volcanoes, blown up with prehistoric hydrogen bombs, and now the ghosts of these Thetans inhabit us, and we must audit ourselves using a E-Meter, a Nintendo-sized device that costs on average around $14,000. Fact:' The Tremetina Base in New Mexico is an underground labrynth carved into a mountain a la NORAD containing Hubbard's writings on steel tablets and incased in titanium. Know that your donations to said "church" are well-spent. Fact: The church of Scientology uses their bottomless accounts to sue any and all dissenters or trash-talkers of their "church". ...and yet they brag about how their horseshit is supposed to "clear your mind" despite the fact they want any and all records on your life. Where exactly in the "science" in such laugher-inducing horse shit? They are con artists, plain and simple.
That reminds me of a book; I believe it was Tom Sawyer. Twain included some sort of prelude or foreword that in no uncertain terms said that the following book was a simple story and nothing more. People have ever since been dissecting the entire thing for symbolism and deeper meaning. Help me out here. It IS Tom Sawyer, am I right?
I might catch some heat for this but since I just tried watching it on Netflix: Weeds I watched the first season and the first half of the second before I gave up on it. There is no depth at all to the characters; they all just feel like props or ideas on the screen. Part of the problem too is that there is basically no background information given about the state of the Botwin family before Nancy starts selling weed, but I don't think even that would be a problem if the writers had done more with the characters as they were at the time the show takes place. It did pick up a little steam in the second half of season one but dipped in quality in season 2, and I have no desire to continue watching it.
Seriously, I don't understand how you read all the way through 'The Game' and come away with a Gospel for getting pussy. The ending is where the PUA's are all douchebags who can't adapt, their bullshit stops working on girls who've seen their crap before, and Strauss finds out that ditching the PUA crap and having an honest relationship works way the fuck better. I know the guy's relationship didn't work out and now he cashes in on the easy money from the PUA community, but for fuck sake - he's cashing in on easy money. The honest part was in the fucking book - the new spin is the lie you idiots. Seriously, read 'The Game' to the fucking end - and it's a huge insight into why PUA bullshit is stupid. If you take that book as a Gospel for anything, except why PUA's are sad, you clearly didn't fucking read the end of the fucking book, you MORONS. I never finished anything Robert Green wrote. I tried a couple of times, then I went and read 'The Prince' or 'The Art of War' for myself instead of reading his boring cliff notes. I don't fucking get why people are so in love with him.
The Watchmen. Yes, the comic book. I tried really hard to like it. I researched everything about it to try and understand it. Nope, just don't care. I don't know why everyone has such a hard-on for it. Along the same lines, Pulp Fiction. Edit: Maybe I should clarify that I like Pulp Fiction, I just don't now how it's supposed to be the most awesome movie ever.
I'm going to have to get on the bandwagon for Sparks, Meyers, Austen, and even McCarthy as frustratingly terrible writers. Glee. It's worse than Twilight. I tried to like it. It doesn't make me feel good, want to sing, or even dance (always a possibility with me). It makes me want to consider serial killing as a new hobby, however. Anal Bleaching, Vajazzle, calf implants, etc, etc... Give me a fucking break. Way to improve yourself, fucking retard.
Catcher In The Rye There is nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING, profound about this book, or JD Salinger. He was, from many accounts, a real prick that had a severe case a social-anxiety disorder, but because he was friends with everyone at The New Yorker, was lauded as a literary genius. I've read better papers from my wife's barely literate 10th graders. Nothing groundbreaking or shocking. The Passion of the Christ This is probably an American South-only deal, but after that movie was released, I couldn't go 10 minutes without hearing someone say, "The Passion of The Christ" really made me look at my relationship with Jesus, and made me want to be a better Christian." Thank God it has been proven that Mel Gibson is just a whacko douche. Bob Dylan WORST concert I've ever been to. I get that he's written some great songs, but goddamn, the man did not give a shit at his concert, and his music was indecipherable both vocally and instrumentally. I was on the 5th row and couldn't understand anything. So what if he wrote" All Along the Watchtower"? Hendrix's version kicks his into the dirt 8 days a week and twice on Sunday. Musical genius? Maybe, but a shit artist. Yoga I have nothing really, except for all the smug douches, male and female, that talk about how great yoga is for them. Fuck Yoga (except for girls that have great asses, and wear those yoga pants).
I can understand not liking Cormac McCarthy. Heck, *I* don't like a lot of his stuff. But he is a profoundly excellent writer. He is so much better than somebody like Stephanie Meyers that it's they're hardly in the same medium. His use of vocabulary and tone is really top-notch, even if you find his writing overwrought and his plots meandering. There is a huge difference between somebody writing books that aren't for everybody and somebody not being a good writer. He could very well be overrated, and nobody over the age of 20 should read anything they don't want to, but he's a master at his craft.
Spoiler The whole suicide / martyr thing definitely boosted their mystique and punctuated their depressing ethos, that's true. However, I've been re-listening to them lately, and I think they hold up really well. Their melodies are exquisite, and there is a lot more going on in the lyrics than whiny self indulgent bullshit. The contrast, within a single song, between hard thrash rock and gentle melody is memorable and was largely unique at the time. Without Nirvana, I suspect that the current music landscape would look incredibly barren.
I actually read a lot into Tom Sawyer. Clemens was revolutionary for his time, but he was relatively subtle with his ideas. A lot of his stuff pretends to pander to the views of the time while actually making fun of them. It's a great book even without the little political and moral messages scattered throughout, and you can read it just for the story. But there is definitely some stuff going on underneath Tom 'n' friends just floating down the river. Also, keep in mind that Samuel Clemens was notorious for being tongue-in-cheek. I could definitely see him writing, "Nope, no symbolism going on here. None at all. Carry on, go about your business, nothing to see here, people." That in and of itself is funny as hell.
On the topic of books, I can't stand Robertson Davies's first chapter of his Deptford Trilogy: Fifth Business, which is ranked as one of the best novels of the 20th century. Despite the fact it takes place near where I live, I can't STAND this fucking novel. Davies intentionally wrote it to not exactly make sense, and he DID do a bang-up job in the department. What couldbe a story five pages long instead becomes an author making K2 out of every molehill in the story, presenting characters that bring a new meaning to the word "uninteresting", who constantly change names throughout the "plot" which basically consists of rich milquetoast who is haunted his entire fucking life by the fact his friend/enemy hit a pregant woman with a snowball when they were young. Then, that simple fucking incident butterfly effects into THREE boring novels. Call it whatever you want. I call the book a maddening, unnecessarrily confusing turd.
I watched it because my roommate was into it and eventually like every serial show you just kind of want to see what happens. Beyond that I though the show was terribly unfunny and all the characters were one dimensional and boring. Add to that the humor panders directly to hippy pot smoking libs, it gets very repetitive an predictable. Just another reason that Showtime has done nothing of note outside of Dexter. That includes Californication, I watched the first season of that and it did have more depth than Weeds but it just seemed to run off of being able to show titties.