God bless the goddamn Onion

The Guardian did recaps of the Wire a couple of years after it ended, if I remember correctly.

I think the only recaps of a show I've read all the way through on the avclub were the first two seasons of Deadwood that they revisited a few years ago. I thought they were quite good.

there was a cool thing on slate where they had mafia experts recapping sopranos episodes

Robyn Hitchcock's song-hating piece was really thoughtful and intelligent and non-obvious, almost all the others are awful though.

Rabin's Simpsons recaps were more fun when they had multiple grammatical errors in each paragraph and were clearly written in under an hour, probably while hungover.

yeah. i dont buy that only a handful of shows 'deserve' scrutiny, but the problem with recaps is the turnaround is too rapid for them to say anything interesting - about subtext, about filmmaking, about storytelling. they can only, well, recap. and if the writer is sharp sometimes you get some kernels of insight, but it's a thin reward for reading every week

― turds (Hungry4Ass)

this is otm and also i think often their scrutiny when it attempts to delve into "what it all means" is often simply wrong-headed speculation about what's going to happen to a character, or something obvious and dumb like "well call me crazy but i think that thoughtless comment about rape made to so and so certainly affected her considering she was raped last season."

ya there's a lot of hunting and pecking for meaningful signs & symbols

The EW recaps of Lost were some of the most insane symbol hunting things ever. That Doc Jensen dude is certifiable.

ya was kind of a megaburn on him when the show ended and everybody realized it had all been make-it-up-as-you-go-along bullshit

i feel like sometimes the recaps break down into some kind of tearful sincerity about the show's quality, 'goddammit this is why it's great and means something, when they do things like this.'

wild speculation on lost recaps were p awesome and kind of better than the show itself tbh

yeah it was the main reason i kept watching

Robyn Hitchcock's song-hating piece was really thoughtful and intelligent and non-obvious, almost all the others are awful though.

― JoeStork, Thursday, March 7, 2013 1:40 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh god i forgot this feature is literally called "Hatesong"

steve albini's made me hate steve albini a lot more than i usually do, which was an accomplishment

The Posies actually have a song called "Hate Song," AVC missing out on some real synergy here.

I never watched Lost but I will say that wild speculation was really fun when it was episodes of Survivor ten years ago and there really was this a real creative energy put into sifting through a show that seemed to have been deliberately crafted for the clue-hunters at a number of levels. There was actually fun for the fan community in reverse-engineering the likely winner based on the editing cues. Don't know if they kept that stuff going, I bailed after season ten or eleven but it was pretty great dorky fun.

thats kinda awesome

http://www.theonion.com/articles/video-of-man-weeping-becomes-viral-hit,31710/

yep, watched the whole thing

http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do,31742/

I had never seen this old one that got tweeted this morning:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/slightly-upset-woman-declared-insane,341/

dying

http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do,31742/

― s.clover, Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:04 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

hahaha *feels intense stabs of pain in lower abdomen*

haha, perfect.

And on the "Onion goes dark" front,

Christopher Walken

http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do,31742/

― s.clover, Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:04 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

hahaha *feels intense stabs of pain in lower abdomen*

― 乒乓, Wednesday, March 20, 2013 1:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

;_;

this one confused the hell out of me until i saw the byline
http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-am-old-and-confused-and-paralyzed-with-sexual-fr,31680/

every so often the Onion do pieces like that 'find a thing you're passionate about etc' one that pull off the dual trick of having a (near enough) universal resonance while also reading like whoever wrote is blowing off some personal anguish

It has been incredibly good for the last year or two. Wonder if the pay wall has helped boost quality.

Okay that pope one had me in tears, genuinely biggest laugh in a long, long time.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/gaypride-parade-sets-mainstream-acceptance-of-gays,351/

"They kept chanting things like, 'We're here, we're queer, get used to it!' and 'Hey, hey, we're gay, we're not going to go away!'" Orosco said. "All I can say is, I was used to it, but now, although I'd never felt this way before, I wish they would go away."

Like half my fb friends have shared that "nights and weekends" piece. seems to have really struck a chord.

Yeah same here. And I think it really does with all of us, which if you think about it is fucking depressing!

would be more depressing to not have those nights n weekends

yeah I dunno I had a solid 18 months of having no school and almost no work encumbering my time and I was pretty miserable and wasn't achieving any dreams.

good point.

well, poverty is probly a bit worse than pishing yr life away at pointless unsatisfying drudgery but i don't think that undermines the article any

obv some people will disagree but i don't think they're being more realistic

it is a bit depressing but it's also possible to make a real commitment to a hobby in the evenings and weekends. if you do find yourself wishing you could do it all the time that's not necessarily a negative. still a great wry laugh tho, most of us still need to work.

I think what it means to me is this:

I used to do music, and it was something that I gave a large percentage of my time to.

Now, similarly to the article, the best I could hope for would be 30 mins every other day, maybe a couple hours a weekend.

This is not enough time in bursts to get back to proficiency, or to produce anything worth the effort.

So, I don't.

My brane still writes songs / music unfettered, they are the finest songs ever, as long as I don't actually commit them to physical media.

I think more why I found it depressing was less the "I only spend X a week on my passion" than the "I spend most of my hours on this shitty job that I hate" part. I can think of very few people who genuinely love their job to the point they leap out of bed for it/put in extra hours/do it all the time cos theyre obsessed with it. The rest of us do what we do because it pays the bills, and for whatever fucked up reason, creative pursuits don't do this.

I think it's verisimilitude doing the work more than anything else, the article seemed very mid-period Onion in that they've never actually dropped off from having A+ funny ideas but they don't always have more in the article than "The Headline, Expanded". It seemed like they were acknowledging this when they brought in the front page stuff that was just headlines.

Trayce have you considered being Amanda Palmer, I am genuinely surprised at how many people don't consider this as a career option.

I think if I spent significantly longer on my creative endeavour, I'd want some sort of progress to happen to them...

i don't think the bigger issue is whether you should be able to make a living from your personal creative interests, what the piece nails is the relative time and energy people feel they're able to allot to what they have to do and what they want to do. for some people that's not problematic, it's LYFE, and for others it's terrible but you can disagree with where the fault lies, yrself or the society you belong to or some combo of both

i just think its good to remember that no side has a monopoly on truth there as to what's effed up with the world and if your world doesn't seem too effed up then good for you, carry on

Trayce have you considered being Amanda Palmer

Haha. I'd rather die.

i liked and vibed w/ that article but lets b/h its a slightly more subtle/less earnest version of the stuff we make fun of on the facebook artist thread

that tends to be laughed at for the manner in which it's said more than what it's saying though I think?

ie obvious truisms presented as 'insight'

yeah there's nothing deep in that Onion bit but it's delivery twists the knife in just right, plenty of wisdom is just reminding you of shit you already know

it's not even a particularly well written one imo, by their own v high standards of rhythm, but it is a good topic.