Quotables #1

Amy:

 …And that’s why, if I ever saw Tom Cruise, I’d like to punch him square in the face.

Aging Hippie Who Was In Our Backyard For No Discernible Reason:  

Knowing Tom Cruise, I understand that impulse.  I do.  But then I think of The Oneness.

Episcopalianism Conversion Watch #1

 

Your humble host is, despite all odds, a practicing Catholic.

When I’m confronted with my crass hypocrisy by either my progressive/feminist friends or my Catholic friends, I generally have two answers:

1)  Hypocrisy (especially the sexual variety) is the birthright of all Irish Catholics.

2)  Less flippantly, I quote Graham Greene. “Continual failure or the circumstances of our private life finally make it impossible to make any promises at all and many of us abandon Confession and Communion to join the Foreign Legion of the Church and fight for a city of which we are no longer full citizens.”

Part of me thinks the joke is the better answer; we must all learn to live with certain inconsistencies in our lives.  Less broadly, we must all learn to live with contradictions and imperfections in our inner lives.  We’re all sinners, after all, and abiding inner turmoil for the sake of preserving the status quo is a good personal definition of sin.  Quite Catholic of me, I know, in both my willingness to blame the individual and in my obtuseness.  

My personal confusion aside, I read things like this (especially coming on the heels of the California gay marriage decision), and I want to down a shot of Bushmills, put on an orange scarf, and skip down to the nearest Episcopalian church whistling “We Sail The Ocean Blue.”

This Ain’t Aruba, Bitch

I generally resist the urge to talk about “The Wire” online, mainly because I’m liable to turn into a squealing fanboy in an instant, even with confronted with facets of the show that obviously beg criticism (such as its treatment of women).  And what kind of internet demagogue would I be without my cheap veneer of above-it-all pseudo-intellectualism?  Plus, those offensively cheesy Slate dialogues are enough to turn anyone off writing about this show.  But we’re in the run-up to the final episode, so here goes nothing (Note: we’re going to talk about Season 5, here, so be warned). 

 

Pour a 40 on the Curb for William F. Buckley

 Though American conservatism would’ve been better off following cordial, Eisenhower-style detente rather than Buckley-style scorched-earth polarization; he still represents a more thoughtful, self-realized strain than his mouth-breathing neo-con progeny.  So tip your drink both to the man, *and* to the fact that you’ve outlived the fucker. Here at “Reading Too Much Into It,” we always honor the thoughtful, no matter how far down any particular rabbit hole they go. 

Adventures in Close Reading #2: Dolphin’s Cry

Dedicated as we at Reading Too Much Into It are to bringing light to the dark corners of post-grunge rock lyrics, I was delighted to find, somewhere lurking at the back of my consciousness, the memory of this Live song. 

Now, of course no one outside of VH1 talking heads paid any attention to Live after 1994’s Throwing Copper, which had their one legitimate mainstream radio hit (“Lightning Crashes”) and several other modern-rock hits (“I Alone,” “Selling the Drama”).  And let’s face it; in hindsight it’s pretty embarrassing that anyone paid attention to such overwrought angsty silliness in the first place.  Though I do still get a touch a riled up remembering that my local Montana radio station bleeped out the word “placenta” in the first line of “Lightning Crashes.”

However, let’s not dwell on “Lightning Crashes” since it’s lyrical content is pretty cut-and-dried, by modern-rock standards at least.  ”Dolphin’s Cry” is late-period Live anyhow, and, watching the video, one has to admire Ed Kowalczyk’s commitment to such deeply, deeply stupid lyrics (seriously, you guys, how hilarious are those sub-Scott Stapp facial expressions?).  Beyond that, though, I was thrilled to find a genuine controversy surrounding the lyrics.  As per usual, it involves using confusing pseudo-religious metaphors to make a dumb sex joke sound all, ya know, poetical and shit. 

Adventures in Close Reading: A New Series

The other day I ran across the enclosed, a close reading of The Verve Pipe’s late-90s modern-rock radio hit “The Freshmen.”  Now, there are few cultural artifacts less worthy of scrutiny.  I’m quite confident that parsing the lyrics of “How Bizarre?” would yield more enlightening results.  Yet our man on the scene, Brian Vander Ark, an actual member of The Verve Pipe wanted to leave no ambiguity.  So moved, was I, that I decided to inaugurate a new series on this blog, one where I focus all my insights on the most disposable pop cult possible.  On the things themselves, in fact.  Thank Brian Vander Ark, for ushering in this new era. 

To recap: 1)  Brian Vander Ark wrote the lyric:  ”Stop a baby’s breath and a shoe full of rice, NO”

2)  Brian Vander Ark then felt the need to explain to you the lyric’s metaphorical content. 

Enjoy:

Of Pantsuits and Burqas

This photo is so mindblowing I can’t even begin to parse it:

Whether in the fundamentalist Muslim feminine garb or the Western corporate feminine garb, at least the women of the world all love plush pink velvet rooms.

Via/More

Let’s Overthink: Albus Dumbledore

Yes, I know I’m approximately one hundred Internet years late on this one, but I am nothing if not unhip. And much has been said on this topic already, generally along one of the following lines: 1) Down with authorial intent, 2) This is a backdoor-diversity cop-out, 3) Great, all my kids are going to turn gay now, or 4) I’m off to edit my slashfic. (Personally, I’m officially a Dumbledore/Snape shipper now).

Let’s Overthink: Notre Dame Football

Here we go, the post that makes my (scant) feminist/tv nerd audience delete their bookmarks. Uh, if it helps you stick around, we can subject a few tight-pantsed dudes to the female gaze in the comments, for a change, or we could discuss the intricacies of ND’s NBC contract.

Notre Dame football occupies a strange cultural place, a place it shares with perhaps just the New York Yankees. Few cultural institutions are so loved by their fans (if in fact you can call the weird mixture of obsessiveness, fickleness, and entitlement “love”) and so hated by almost everyone else. First of all, there’s the Catholic Factor (I’d argue that this is a huge motivation for, say, the collective desire for the state-schooled UNC boys to beat Duke every year). And of course any wealthy private school is always going to attract it’s share of haters (yawn) and its share of you’re-no-better-than-us-ers (they’ve got a point).

Let’s Overthink: Nerdiness, Part 2

So if we’re seeing sitcoms change their minds about what “the masculine” means, what does that mean? That depends who you ask. If you ask The Big Bang Theory, it means that pretty girls are to be chided for their “shallowness” if they don’t immediately take off their clothes for the socially awkward. If you ask Chuck, it means that the nerdy guys ought to butch up, while somehow still keeping their nerdy inner sweetness. The former is the insane, but durable fantasy that all men are entitled to a wife who looks like a supermodel, regardless of appearance, personality, or social status. Nice guys routinely whine about how hotties won’t do them, but women aren’t allowed to care about those things without being “shallow.”