Thursday, December 02, 2004
This is Not to Ascribe Any Great Significance to the Ridiculous Crap I Listen To
I think that people who are too dumb to work the fryer at Long John Silver’s all get jobs as pop culture critics for daily metropolitan newspapers. The Boston Globe’s own Renee Graham is one of the best/worst of them; her inane “Life in the Pop Lane” column brightens my lunch break every Tuesday. Her latest piece, arguing that Jude Law and Colin Ferrell are celebrities and not actors or movie stars, and that their movies bomb because people don’t want to pay to see celebrities when they can just stay home and watch for free on Entertainment Tonight and Extra, is blissfully asinine. I like how the people paid to take stupid mindless pop culture bullshit seriously always take the wrong stupid mindless pop culture bullshit seriously. Not that I can say what the right stuff would be, of course.
Perfect example of the repugnant brilliance of Renee Graham: in her review of Eminem’s Encore, she writes, “Eminem, to borrow a line from Ricky Ricardo, comes across as a man with ‘a lot of 'splainin' to do.’” You have to appreciate the complete idiotic ridiculousness of a thirty-something African American woman referencing I Love Lucy when talking about the sordid lives and horrible music of asshole rappers.
Renee Graham’s articles are generic, lazily written, intellectually stillborn, and only occasionally humorous enough to be worth reading. She's foolish or dishonest enough to treat popular music as if it has any great relevance outside of entertainment and the bank accounts of those who try to profit from it. There is some room for serious, intelligent discussion of the role popular music plays in our society, but Renee Graham has proven incapable of entering into such a discussion. She's banal, bland, and completely unnecessary. And yet she’s still not nearly as horrible as any of the regular contributors to the Boston Phoenix’s music section. (We’ll exclude Franklin Bruno – he’s pretty okay).
I think that people who are too dumb to work the fryer at Long John Silver’s all get jobs as pop culture critics for daily metropolitan newspapers. The Boston Globe’s own Renee Graham is one of the best/worst of them; her inane “Life in the Pop Lane” column brightens my lunch break every Tuesday. Her latest piece, arguing that Jude Law and Colin Ferrell are celebrities and not actors or movie stars, and that their movies bomb because people don’t want to pay to see celebrities when they can just stay home and watch for free on Entertainment Tonight and Extra, is blissfully asinine. I like how the people paid to take stupid mindless pop culture bullshit seriously always take the wrong stupid mindless pop culture bullshit seriously. Not that I can say what the right stuff would be, of course.
Perfect example of the repugnant brilliance of Renee Graham: in her review of Eminem’s Encore, she writes, “Eminem, to borrow a line from Ricky Ricardo, comes across as a man with ‘a lot of 'splainin' to do.’” You have to appreciate the complete idiotic ridiculousness of a thirty-something African American woman referencing I Love Lucy when talking about the sordid lives and horrible music of asshole rappers.
Renee Graham’s articles are generic, lazily written, intellectually stillborn, and only occasionally humorous enough to be worth reading. She's foolish or dishonest enough to treat popular music as if it has any great relevance outside of entertainment and the bank accounts of those who try to profit from it. There is some room for serious, intelligent discussion of the role popular music plays in our society, but Renee Graham has proven incapable of entering into such a discussion. She's banal, bland, and completely unnecessary. And yet she’s still not nearly as horrible as any of the regular contributors to the Boston Phoenix’s music section. (We’ll exclude Franklin Bruno – he’s pretty okay).
