Stranger in a Strange Land. So it's a best-selling cult classic that won a Hugo Award, I still hated it. Plus it's long, so I had lots of time to cultivate my anathema. Why? For one, I am so over Christ figures. It was a good literary device in The Red Badge of Courage and the Bible, but now I grok the inevitable end and it's about as surprising as watching The Sixth Sense for a second time. It's always the same: dead people. For another, Valentine Michael Smith was a huge slut. I suppose the book was hip to the times, but since I read it in 1999 Mr. Smith seemed more a man-whore from Mars than a sexually liberated messiah.
Pulp Fiction. This film won an Academy Award and highest honors at Cannes film festival, which reinforces my opinion that the French are mentally disabled, except when it comes to making me dinner. I don't have anything against Tarantino, I liked Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill, but damn I wish I'd never watched this movie. Every character (save Butch Collidge) struck me as a waste of life and I wished they would die, so I could rewind and see them die again. The only way I'll rewatch it is if Rankin/Bass remakes it in stop-motion felt-mation and writes in Yukon Cornelius just for me.
Nirvana. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was named a generational anthem and Kurt Cobain a spokesman for generation X. I tried to like them, because MacGyver is a fan and I already deny him Pulp Fiction watching privileges if I'm around, despite his hero worship of Samuel L. Jackson. I just couldn't do it, Kurt came across as whiny and discordant. I watched a biography that pointed out how the band initially divided the profits equally, but Kurt demanded the lion's share when they were super-popular, and then he just came across as an asshole. "Rape Me" made me punish my car stereo for bringing that song into my personal space. It's supposed to be feminist-friendly, but it doesn't hold a candle to "Me and a Gun." Happily, Kurt died and Foo Fighters came to rock my world. Yay!
Thomas Kincade Prints. He's the most collected living artist who wants to bring world peace through the Lord's influence on his works. You know what? It isn't art. It isn't that interesting or pretty. An atheist could do it just as well. The whole lot is very repetitious and predictable: house with nice landscaping and illuminated windows. It is something from the realm of cat sweatshirt people, who hang their prints between Franklin Fucking Mint limited edition baby angel plates and whimsical posters. Why does the work of Mr. Kincade inspire my malice and scorn? Because when I see one of those damn houses, just for a second, I wish I lived in it. It looks like a home where fresh-baked Tollhouse cookies are served daily, where aquariums never grow scum and junk mail never collects exponentially, and where no one gets cancer. Because the pictures make me briefly yearn for a fairy tale, because they show a glimpse of the unreachable, because they make me feel vulnerable to materialism and cat sweatshirtiness, I hate them. A lot.
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2 comments:
why is it that now i want to get you a thomas kincade cross stitch? does that make me a bad person? or is that one of those things that's okay for gag gift purposes?
I wouldn't say you are a bad person. It sounds like something I would do to be funny, and I don't meet all the criteria for being bad.
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