I was talking with my friend Tony last night about music for help on a project I’m working on. During the course of the conversation, his list of five greatest records ever came up. His five certainly all belong on the list, yet maybe two would slot into my top five.
This led me to thinking today about the concept of greatness in art. Anyone who thinks about such things seriously will have a list of their own five greatest albums. Many, if not most, will have a list comprised of worthy choices. And you’ll have dozens, maybe hundreds, of different albums on that list. What does that mean?
I think I’ve figured it out.
When I was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and nineteen and twenty, when I was learning how to be who I’d eventually become, I think it was safe to say that I was an idiot. Like the time I destroyed my wheel hitting a curb on the way to see Primus, then rolled the car back in the jack. Then the show sucked.
Burn After Reading is the Coen brothers‘ first movie since No Country for Old Men, which everyone decided was the movie to honor for the brothers’ career of nearly unbroken awesomeness.
When I was in middle school (which, for me, ran from sixth to eighth grade), every sixth grader was required to take an “exploratory” class as an elective. Which, you know, required elective. Very funny, right?
Anyway: this exploratory class covered the four main classes that could be taken as electives as a seventh- and eighth-grader. You had one quarter each in basic (not BASIC) computer programming, tech ed (shop class), art, and home ec. As far as such things go, this was a pretty effective way of exposing kids to the choices available to them.
I had been wondering what to do about my bag. After all, it was my first attempt, and as endearing as quirkiness may be, there were definitely flaws to be corrected in the design and execution. Still, I thought it might be a waste to basically chuck a perfectly functional bag, especially one that held such specific significance for me.
Luckily, someone else made the decision for me.
As everyone knows, we are all unique. There is evidently something in everyone’s personality that makes them different and worth knowing.
Leaving aside the fact that I have never seen in most people anything that makes them worth knowing, I have to question whether this alleged “uniqueness” in fact exists.
I (on the good days) consider myself a fairly gifted person. I like to think I can write well, that I’m well-spoken, maybe funny, attractive, have opinions worth sharing, that I’m smarter than the average bear (and for that matter, the average human), and super fucking humble.
So what?
So, I’m reading the accompanying article on Death Cab for Cutie’s session for Daytrotter when when I get bludgeoned by this question: “If this isn’t love this time, then what is it now?”
I saw something today that I do not believe I will ever see again. Riding up 1st Avenue between 77th and 79th Streets, there were, in a row, a USPS truck, a UPS truck, and a regular delivery box truck all double parked, as per usual… but not blocking the bike lane. As if this were not borderline impossible enough, the driver of the delivery truck did something that I had come to regard as beyond their capability: he saw me in his mirror and waited for me to pass so that he didn’t door me.
I almost crashed from shock.