Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post - put them here

Jack Black, High Fidelity: "I never thought I'd say this, but can I go work now?"

It suddenly struck me that there's an uncanny resemblance between top actress Emma Stone:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/emma-stone-taylor-swift-in-600w-88591534.jpg

And top interplanetary ambassador Alpha Centauri from The Curse of Peladon:
https://doctorwhofromthestart.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/monster-of-peladon1.jpg

omg

Wow ha

Protesting genocide is antisemitic now. The irony is just... / you know what, forget it. I'm going back to having No Opinion.

I’ve been meaning to ask for a while, is this a bit

Impossible task to to track that thought to a particular poster

otm

That's the fun* of the thread, you have to guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-iw3yyLApQ

lol nice

Impossible task to to track that thought to a particular poster

― H.P

if it's me, describing any of my posts as short enough to be a "bit" is... perhaps an understatement

But that is your bit

no, this is my bit

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0160/7970/products/Berlin_1_black_1024x.jpg

You take that back about Arab on Radar!

I stand with Arab on Radar

most things contain a mixture of good and bad. unlike your posts on ilx.

It is my solemn belief that it is incumbent upon every poster who travels back in time to have lots of sex with old or semi-old celebrities to also use their miraculous time-travelling abilities to kill baby Hitler (substitute another former baby if you wish)

I intend to use my time machine to kill baby Hitler, not have sex with Barbara Stanwyck.

― The Corbynite Maneuver (Tom D.), Saturday, April 25, 2020 6:57 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Tom D. can have sex with Barbara Stanwyck now if he wishes

pop quiz for a sunday:

"i love music!

....except rap."

in 2024, is an indicator of:

a. racism
b. the onset of dementia
c. a bad faith attempt at a joke
d. a valuable opinion worthy of consideration
e. all of the above
f. only a+c
g. only a+d

no wrong answer, btw.

i'd come closest to answering "b", though not quite. when i try to critically evaluate the statement "i love music except rap", it just seems semantically meaningless to me, like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". it doesn't fit into my worldview. i reject the reality implied by such a statement wholesale. i reject the _possibility_ of "d." as an answer. someone saying that statement to me is outlining a fault line, a place where the assumption of "shared reality" breaks down.

---

travelling back in time to kill hitler is textbook slacktivism, imo. like, even if i kill baby hitler that doesn't erase millennia of bigotry and oppression, you know? people act like anti-semitism started with hitler and that if only that darn hitler hadn't come along there'd be no such thing. which i feel like is a rather silly way to act.

(predictably) i love how futurama handled time traveling to assassinate hitler: everything's on a loop anyway, so we'll get 'em next time.

but ya, that ignores all that pesky traditional european antisemitism completely, doesn't it? if we're gonna retroactively assassinate notable historic figures to dick with the space-time continuum, i say get rid of someone funny like shakespeare or mandela in addition to hitler. neutrality and whatever.

"i'l give you something to mandela effect about"

now that you mention it i'm really in favor of traveling back in time to assassinate baby shakespeare. the next time somebody talks about going back in time to assassinate hitler i'll say that i want to go back in time to assassinate shakespeare. because it makes just as much sense, really. i mean i _like_ shakespeare's plays, i think his work is pretty cool and all, but now that you brought it up i really want to do it just to see how it would change things. that's a way more interesting idea than killing baby hitler.

'specially when you factor in those wild conspiracies about how the work of "WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE" was actually an anonymous collaboration of several people.

let's see how wild they really are.☕️

Truly efficient time machine use would combine the errands of baby-killing and celebrity sex. For instance, putting Baby Will Shakespeare to death circa 1564 would also provide an opportunity to visit the Virgin Queen herself, Elizabeth I, if so desired, etc, etc, etc

Sex as a reward for being on the good side and changing the world, where did I hear that pitch before ?

I read a novel this year, Glimpses, where the protagonist travels back in time to help rock stars finish their uncompleted albums - Celebration of the Lizard by the Doors and Smile by the Beach Boys - but he's unable to prevent the death of Jimi Hendrix. This theme is interwoven with his own life story and the suspicious death of his father. Little would the author know that both of those recordings would come out in the 30 years since the book was published.

And maybe Jimi won't have to wait that long... after techno-utopian company Colossal brings back mammoths, I'm sure woolly guitar heroes are next.

Truly efficient time machine use would combine the errands of baby-killing and celebrity sex. For instance, putting Baby Will Shakespeare to death circa 1564 would also provide an opportunity to visit the Virgin Queen herself, Elizabeth I, if so desired, etc, etc, etc

― Halfway there but for you

doctor who tried that, it turned out it wasn't her at all but an alien shape-shifter impersonating her

but his memory got wiped for a while so he spent a few decades or millennia believing that he had, in fact, boned elizabeth i

@ Austin I’m less inclined to think rap non-enjoyers are doing a racism than I am about jazz non-enjoyers. Anybody talking shit about jazz is telling on themselves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB6Ix1sw0iI

"rap isn't music" is the racism telltale

Otm

@ Austin I’m less inclined to think rap non-enjoyers are doing a racism than I am about jazz non-enjoyers. Anybody talking shit about jazz is telling on themselves

― irritable towel syndrome (flamboyant goon tie included)

i don't generally see white people saying "jazz is bad" (unless it's free jazz, which people who come across it without actively seeking it out tend to hate), it's more along the lines of "i don't 'get' jazz". there's a little self-deprecation involved, like, jazz is too "high-class" for them, which i don't think is warranted... i do think it's just not a cultural competency most people pick up on. i don't think of music as a "universal language".

https://i.imgur.com/VqbKeq6.jpeg

it me (on the right)

there will always be a huge percentage of people - a majority of the world even - who will never take rapping seriously. and who will never listen to people rapping. because it isn't singing. in the 80s when there were so many novelty/joke rap songs, that is something the average person could get behind. because they didn't take it seriously and it was a funny thing to dance to/laugh at. but if you ask someone who doesn't listen to rap to take it seriously...in the words of george bush sr. "nah gunna happen". which IS different then out and out racism. the out and out racism is easy to determine. i don't play rap in my store for the most part because i got tired of things like "I feel like THEY'RE yelling at me." the worst was an old man who said he felt like he was being aurally raped. nothing and i mean NOTHING brings out the hate in old boomer white guys like rap. they hate it SOOOOOOOO much.

With the recent deaths of Shelley Duvall and Gena Rowlands, I’ve been watching/re-watching a shit tonne of American movies from the 50s to the 70s, and it almost seems like a feature, in films from that era, for a character (usually the antagonist) to take a moment to say something withering about jazz. I haven’t been keeping track of when and where! I should keep track.

there will always be a huge percentage of people - a majority of the world even - who will never take rapping seriously.

Nah. These people are literally dying out. Anyone under 40 has never known a world without rap. There’s rapping - or at least rap cadences - in every third country song now. Especially country songs by dudes. Rap will literally outlive the “rap isn’t music” people.

i sometimes wonder why Trent Reznor is yelling at me but i've never felt this about rap

I don't enjoy improvisational jazz, but I had a revealing exchange with some jazz drummers a while back when I said, "I don't know how to hear it/understand it because the pattern is too unpredictable, there are too many possibilities" and they were like, "Uh, there are practically no other possibilities, all the musician's choices are pre-determined" I guess by the key, the chords, the progression, the rhythm, the genre, etc? I think that showed that I don't understand the limiting structures.

Nah. These people are literally dying out. Anyone under 40 has never known a world without rap. There’s rapping - or at least rap cadences - in every third country song now. Especially country songs by dudes. Rap will literally outlive the “rap isn’t music” people.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson)

yeah agreed, people who say "rap isn't music", i take them about as seriously as the people who used to say rock and roll wasn't music, it was just a collection of strange electronic noises.

I don't enjoy improvisational jazz, but I had a revealing exchange with some jazz drummers a while back when I said, "I don't know how to hear it/understand it because the pattern is too unpredictable, there are too many possibilities" and they were like, "Uh, there are practically no other possibilities, all the musician's choices are pre-determined" I guess by the key, the chords, the progression, the rhythm, the genre, etc? I think that showed that I don't understand the limiting structures.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit)

that's my experience... when i was young i was getting into "weird music" and got a cd of Free Jazz, and it sounded like just a bunch of weird noise to me. i listen to it now and it sounds basically normal to me. sure, it's an unusual lineup, but the dudes seem to be getting along pretty well and giving each other space. i have a harder time with Miles at the Plugged Nickel 1965... that weird aggro hypermasculine vibe those dudes have combined with the insane degree to which they know their shit makes it a really challenging listen for me

talking about the cultural context of jazz, i was surprised recently to find out just how highly "whiplash" ranks on the IMDB top 100. and apparently a lot of people watch that movie and are like "oh, cool, that's jazz". that's not jazz, that's child abuse. if that's why someone doesn't "like jazz", i'm good with that. i don't like child abuse either!

With the recent deaths of Shelley Duvall and Gena Rowlands, I’ve been watching/re-watching a shit tonne of American movies from the 50s to the 70s, and it almost seems like a feature, in films from that era, for a character (usually the antagonist) to take a moment to say something withering about jazz. I haven’t been keeping track of when and where! I should keep track.

Neither of those actresses is in it but there is really funny rather well-known exchange between Elvis and some beardo jazzbos.

I'm of the age and cohort that I occasionally have to remind myself, oh yeah, some people like jazz.

i used to love teaching my music class for a million reasons, but in part because i was able to show jazz-averse people that jazz is a big tent genre and there is probably a jazz for them. i have a lot of good memories of people discovering music they had no idea they would like.

"There’s rapping - or at least rap cadences - in every third country song now."

just to be clear. i was talking about the act of rapping. not the music or beats. there are just a lot of people who don't consider anything other than singing to be a genuine thing to listen to.

i do sometimes think that people who listen to rap aren't really aware of the fact that most people don't listen to rap.

people age out of rap as well. which doesn't happen with every genre. people listen to less of it as they age. and 99.99% of people who liked rap when they were young will tell you that the best rap was made when they were young and that the rap made now is trash made by people with no talent.

People age out of a lot of genres tho … i kinda wanna say that most people as they get to be old tend to get Hongroy