Whatcha reading?

[Flex]

Still chugging along with Meet Me in the Bathroom aka a Celebration of Rich Kids Pursuing Fame By Exploring/Exploiting the Bohemian Life. It's become a hate-listen. The music aside—some of it I like, some I don't get the big deal—but the biographies and anecdotes don't endear me one bit to the main characters. So and so inherited some money and decided property would be a good investment, so he bought a bar. This guy met that guy at boarding school in Europe. I didn't know what to do with my life, so my mother found me a film school course in NY and moved me there. And because there's no context or analysis from Goodman, the intended reading of it all should be celebratory. I remember a student in my punk class thought we should read this. If we had, it would have been me steering them to understand that there is nothing punk about this story.

Interesting. I like a lot of the music the book and movie cover - being on the East Coast in college at the time made it a pretty major cultural touchstone - but my instinct was always these are people I probably didn't want to know how they got what they got. Guess I was right! Sometimes the music is better when you don't know the story behind it.

[Dr. Medulla]

Still chugging along with Meet Me in the Bathroom aka a Celebration of Rich Kids Pursuing Fame By Exploring/Exploiting the Bohemian Life. It's become a hate-listen. The music aside—some of it I like, some I don't get the big deal—but the biographies and anecdotes don't endear me one bit to the main characters. So and so inherited some money and decided property would be a good investment, so he bought a bar. This guy met that guy at boarding school in Europe. I didn't know what to do with my life, so my mother found me a film school course in NY and moved me there. And because there's no context or analysis from Goodman, the intended reading of it all should be celebratory. I remember a student in my punk class thought we should read this. If we had, it would have been me steering them to understand that there is nothing punk about this story.

I'm a lot more careful about my inverted snobbery than I used to be but I feel so much of a lack of artistic hunger or urgency in these artists, particularly after their first albums. Lots of great music came from the middle class, but these people in their stylish and expensive leather jackets are the same scions of the idle rich who would have busied themselves with a Grand Tour at that time in their lives in another century.

The number of the interviewees who said that from the start they wanted to be famous is numbing. They wanted to be cool and to hang out with cool people. Fine, whatever, I suppose. It's a pretty shallow ambition to me, tho not uncommon. But it's certainly not worth celebrating like this book does. The art comes off as a vehicle to achieve material ends, nothing more.

[Flex]

The number of the interviewees who said that from the start they wanted to be famous is numbing. They wanted to be cool and to hang out with cool people. Fine, whatever, I suppose. It's a pretty shallow ambition to me, tho not uncommon. But it's certainly not worth celebrating like this book does. The art comes off as a vehicle to achieve material ends, nothing more.

Listen, just because you easily achieved that ambition by hanging out with me here on IMCT doesn't mean it's as easy for others.

[Dr. Medulla]

The number of the interviewees who said that from the start they wanted to be famous is numbing. They wanted to be cool and to hang out with cool people. Fine, whatever, I suppose. It's a pretty shallow ambition to me, tho not uncommon. But it's certainly not worth celebrating like this book does. The art comes off as a vehicle to achieve material ends, nothing more.

Listen, just because you easily achieved that ambition by hanging out with me here on IMCT doesn't mean it's as easy for others.

But I'm neither famous nor cool! Not even Limey famous.

[Flex]

The number of the interviewees who said that from the start they wanted to be famous is numbing. They wanted to be cool and to hang out with cool people. Fine, whatever, I suppose. It's a pretty shallow ambition to me, tho not uncommon. But it's certainly not worth celebrating like this book does. The art comes off as a vehicle to achieve material ends, nothing more.

Listen, just because you easily achieved that ambition by hanging out with me here on IMCT doesn't mean it's as easy for others.

But I'm neither famous nor cool! Not even Limey famous.

Well, you get to hang out with cool people anyways. That's half a loaf.

[Dr. Medulla]

The number of the interviewees who said that from the start they wanted to be famous is numbing. They wanted to be cool and to hang out with cool people. Fine, whatever, I suppose. It's a pretty shallow ambition to me, tho not uncommon. But it's certainly not worth celebrating like this book does. The art comes off as a vehicle to achieve material ends, nothing more.

Listen, just because you easily achieved that ambition by hanging out with me here on IMCT doesn't mean it's as easy for others.

But I'm neither famous nor cool! Not even Limey famous.

Well, you get to hang out with cool people anyways. That's half a loaf.

Cool isn't what the Fonz made it out to be.

[Flex]

The number of the interviewees who said that from the start they wanted to be famous is numbing. They wanted to be cool and to hang out with cool people. Fine, whatever, I suppose. It's a pretty shallow ambition to me, tho not uncommon. But it's certainly not worth celebrating like this book does. The art comes off as a vehicle to achieve material ends, nothing more.

Listen, just because you easily achieved that ambition by hanging out with me here on IMCT doesn't mean it's as easy for others.

But I'm neither famous nor cool! Not even Limey famous.

Well, you get to hang out with cool people anyways. That's half a loaf.

Cool isn't what the Fonz made it out to be.

I'm often referred to as New Radicals Fandom's Fonzie.

[Dr. Medulla]

Listen, just because you easily achieved that ambition by hanging out with me here on IMCT doesn't mean it's as easy for others.

But I'm neither famous nor cool! Not even Limey famous.

Well, you get to hang out with cool people anyways. That's half a loaf.

Cool isn't what the Fonz made it out to be.

I'm often referred to as New Radicals Fandom's Fonzie.

Inder: Change his tagline!

[Silent Majority]

5) A Spaniard in the Works - John Lennon. Hardback. DB. 1965. An improvement, I thought, on Lennon's first collection. Whether I was more in the mood for his nonsense prose or if the actual poems were of a better standard, I'm not completely sure. The Goons influence is also more pronounced here and there are moments that remind me of Peter Cook, who was working contemporaneously. I'd like to have seen Lennon keep this stuff up and have some more structure to his work.

6) King John - William Shakespeare. 1596. Kindle. I loved this one and had such low expectations due to its reputation of being a nothing play. Fantastic writing, of course, but well rounded characters, and a plot that doesn't feel well tread. John is a warlike monarch and Shakespeare sees that as the nonsense it is. We still see all the sides of a man, though, and the enemies in France are as justified in their actions. Absolute groove of a piece, by which I mean I sailed through it the way you'd dance to great, richly textured song.

[Dr. Medulla]

6) King John - William Shakespeare. 1596. Kindle. I loved this one and had such low expectations due to its reputation of being a nothing play. Fantastic writing, of course, but well rounded characters, and a plot that doesn't feel well tread. John is a warlike monarch and Shakespeare sees that as the nonsense it is. We still see all the sides of a man, though, and the enemies in France are as justified in their actions. Absolute groove of a piece, by which I mean I sailed through it the way you'd dance to great, richly textured song.

Even acknowledging that I’m an ignorant bozo when it comes to Shakespeare, apart from the major plays, but I’ve never even heard of this one. There are plenty I’ve heard of but don’t know what they’re about, but not even the title is familiar to me.

[Silent Majority]

6) King John - William Shakespeare. 1596. Kindle. I loved this one and had such low expectations due to its reputation of being a nothing play. Fantastic writing, of course, but well rounded characters, and a plot that doesn't feel well tread. John is a warlike monarch and Shakespeare sees that as the nonsense it is. We still see all the sides of a man, though, and the enemies in France are as justified in their actions. Absolute groove of a piece, by which I mean I sailed through it the way you'd dance to great, richly textured song.

Even acknowledging that I’m an ignorant bozo when it comes to Shakespeare, apart from the major plays, but I’ve never even heard of this one. There are plenty I’ve heard of but don’t know what they’re about, but not even the title is familiar to me.

Yeah, I would never have named it before getting to it in the supposed chronology and I'm not really sure why that would be.

[Olaf]

The histories are probably my favourite Shakespeare genre. I've got to admit I don't recall this one verly well (or like, at all). Read them all ages ago though, in another life. Maybe it's time for a revisit.

[Dr. Medulla]

Tub book:

Very Seventies. A collection of pieces from Crawdaddy. I have had this on my shelf for over 25 years and never done more than look at the TOC. An odd thing that. I'm also somewhat moved to read it because I've been musing, should the history department let me darken its halls again, about a class on the cultural history of the 70s in the US. So it's also a bit of a recon mission.

[Flex]

I guess technically this would go in the movie thread, but billy shakes talk mostly goes here, so this may be a better fit.

I rewatched 1999's film adaptation of Titus - really great for anyone who hasn't seen it. I know it's considered one of Bill's lesser plays, but it's hard not to feel the resonance of the plays themes of generational violence, the deterioration of the stability of the state, the ruinous way adherence to rigid codes interfere with the ability to behave truly ethically, and the way cycles of violence hollow out ones life. Underrated Shakes.

[Silent Majority]

I guess technically this would go in the movie thread, but billy shakes talk mostly goes here, so this may be a better fit.

I rewatched 1999's film adaptation of Titus - really great for anyone who hasn't seen it. I know it's considered one of Bill's lesser plays, but it's hard not to feel the resonance of the plays themes of generational violence, the deterioration of the stability of the state, the ruinous way adherence to rigid codes interfere with the ability to behave truly ethically, and the way cycles of violence hollow out ones life. Underrated Shakes.

I saw that, it was good shit and mad.