i'm sick of elegies

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just for example, the cbc this morning played a 15 minute-long conversation about how terrible the movie-going experience is now, how it's all terribly consumerist and ripoffy and glitzy and shiny and loud and people have no manners and the movies are horrible and the sound is too loud and how theatres were at one time little art deco palaces of affordable pleasure bubbling like champagne flutes full of goodwill and blah blah blah blah

as if absolutely nothing had improved for movie-goers in the past 40 yrs, it's just been a steady slide into unmitigated shitsville and

i'm just so sick of these little vignettes of days gone by - particularly on the goddamn cbc - this hell-in-a-handbasket tongue-clucking chickenlittleism about every little feature of modern life

as the mummies once said, "if you like the 50's so much why don't you go live there?"

is this just a canadian thing? a public-broadcaster thing? is it just me?

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 1 September 2003 01:06 (twenty years ago) link

and what gets me even more about all this shit is it's fucking baby-boomers who are idealizing their law-and-order howdy doody childhoods after they trashed it all in the 60's and 70's

now that their in their 50's they're all "band of brothers" about war, all into phony general stores for their real fake glass milk bottles with elsie the cow on them, all tut tut cluck cluck about the present

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 1 September 2003 01:10 (twenty years ago) link

"now that their in their 50's" = now that they're over fifty years old

sorry about the spelling etc

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 1 September 2003 01:11 (twenty years ago) link

I saw "Party Monster" yesterday at the Castro... sometimes it really is a pleasure to see a movie in a art deco palace. But yeah, it's not like movies and art and life are junk now. Every generation gets nostagic about "the good old days", no?

― Sean (Sean), Monday, 1 September 2003 01:12 (twenty years ago) link

but old movie theatres ARE better! I see your point though

― s1utsky (slutsky), Monday, 1 September 2003 01:12 (twenty years ago) link

dont get stuck on the movie thing...yes yes art deco movie palaces are wonderful but that's self-evident, non? it could be anything. what i'm talking about are these sharply observed detailed little "cotton candy ain't what it used to be" stories on public broadcasting

and it's just like PLEASE open your window for a minute grumpy person and tell me how awful the flowers smell, fucko. it ain't that bad

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 1 September 2003 05:42 (twenty years ago) link

I hate this too Fritz, really fucking hate it. It's very present in Ireland, you get people my age moaning about how Ireland has lost its soul and people aren't polite to each other anymore, I think it's some kind of fetish for being earthy or deep.

― Ronan (Ronan), Monday, 1 September 2003 13:38 (twenty years ago) link

oh good i was starting to think i was imagining it

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 1 September 2003 14:08 (twenty years ago) link

what amazes me is that one would think to a young person this would seem a very hoary old grandad type of thing to say and yet it's so popular!

― Ronan (Ronan), Monday, 1 September 2003 14:09 (twenty years ago) link

THE CELTIC TIGER IS IN SPACE!!

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 1 September 2003 14:11 (twenty years ago) link

Stupid old people. No, it's not just Canada, Fritz.

I think aging punk rockers and obsessive flea market gays are just as bad as the boomers, though. You know, my peers.

― Trish! (Arthur), Monday, 1 September 2003 14:25 (twenty years ago) link

i didn't mean it as a stupid old people thing! well maybe! but not entirely!

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 1 September 2003 14:36 (twenty years ago) link

I didn't either.

― Ronan (Ronan), Monday, 1 September 2003 14:37 (twenty years ago) link

Oh, I know you didn't, Fritz, not entirely. That was just a dumb self-deprecating half-joke that wasn't in response to anyone, really (certainly not you, Ronan!).

― Trish! (Arthur), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:53 (twenty years ago) link

How about ILX elegies?

― hstencil, Monday, 1 September 2003 17:56 (twenty years ago) link

The worst are aging punk rock flea market gays.

― Sean (Sean), Monday, 1 September 2003 18:07 (twenty years ago) link

elegies suck, mainly because nobody ever bothers to offer ideas as to how things can be improved (hell, most don't consider improvement, they simply wish they were in the past). Part of what made Pauline Kael's "The Numbers: Why Movies Are So Bad" so great is that it offered ideas as to how the state of the artform could be improved, rather than merely noting how things were once better (plus the piece wasn't pining for the past as much as acutely detailing problems within the industry).

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Monday, 1 September 2003 18:09 (twenty years ago) link

i think a lot of people's first reaction to anything new is to grumble. they don't even know exactly why they're grumbling. i'd like to think this response (my mom does it some times) conceals a deep pathos and concern for a passing of a world and its values but i dunno.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 1 September 2003 18:11 (twenty years ago) link

This thread used to be so much better.

― Shmuel (shmuel), Monday, 1 September 2003 20:15 (twenty years ago) link

i like tomorrow best

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 1 September 2003 20:25 (twenty years ago) link

CBC used to be so excellent

― dave q, Tuesday, 2 September 2003 06:46 (twenty years ago) link

haha Arthur I've never put my foot in it in the past have I? Ahem.

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 07:42 (twenty years ago) link

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