DISQUS

Kate, good catch! I didn't think of that, but that's a great one. Ah, watching Psycho for the first time...I envy you. :)

Oh, really? I guess I actually like that, though, since I like winning. I think unless it showed the thousandths of a second, I'd be a bit miffed if it didn't give me the benefit of a perceived tie.

Well, looks like America picked right for once, going for talent over...less talent. :) I do think Archuleta has talent, just not as much as Cook. I'm glad he won because it gives me hope that America isn't totally STOOPID all the time, but I do hope he holds out for doing what he wants to with his album.

Jennifer, thanks! I'm not sure David A.'s voice is powerful enough for Broadway, though he did do a pretty ripping job of "And I Am Telling You" when he was a kid.

I think that means you're not a fan of the piercings. I'd never get one myself, but I think they're kind of hot on her. ;)

Evan, this looks amazing. A few questions, though, on getting it to work on my blog. I need to use it not as a widget; my theme isn't widget-aware, and I hate widgets anyway. Is this possible? I tried throwing in "friendfeed_activity()" where I want it to appear in my sidebar, but as you can see if you look, it doesn't work. Do I need to change something in the friendfeed.php file? I'm not very good at php, so I'm not sure just by looking at it. Also, how do I set how many entries to show? Thanks!

Computer desktops are way more fun to organize than real ones. :)

Steinbeck, hmm. My only exposure to Steinbeck was when I read The Red Pony a long time ago. It was in a collection of horse-related stories I had, and it traumatized me. I've had a negative view of Steinbeck ever since, but I suppose I shouldn't let a single story read when I was about ten stop me from reading him forever. I've heard Of Mice and Men is really good.

I know what you're saying regarding the relationship between focusing on consciousness and being told what to think, and I actually thought about that while I was writing it, but the people I have in mind when talking about consciousness are Henry James and Virginia Woolf. Take Mrs. Dalloway for example. Woolf is relentlessly focused on consciousness in that book - everything we read is filtered through some character's consciousness - but it isn't limited to only one. We get some parts from Clarissa Dalloway's point of view, some from Peter, uh, whathisname, and some from Septimus Smith, as well as various random bystanders. So the overall effect is that there are many voices and Woolf doesn't dictate to us who to listen to or what to think about each character. You're perfectly free to think that Clarissa did the right thing marrying Richard or that she should've married Peter. There are some things Woolf clearly has a bee in her bonnet about, notably the big fat FAIL of the medical industry, but she doesn't pull out of the narrative to tell you, in an authoritative narratorial voice, that the medical industry is BAD, the way Dickens does about the school system or the factories. That's the sort of "telling you what to think" I don't like.

Plus, I could be wrong, but I never feel like Woolf would diss me for disagreeing with her, while I think Dickens or (George) Eliot might. She makes me feel like I have agency as a reader, while a lot of earlier writers just want me to passively accept what they're saying. Which of course makes me much less likely to do so, because I'm just rebellious that way.

I suspect that if I had read enough Raymond Chandler, I would know why you're invoking him, but I don't.

Hee. I have to say, if that's Nietszche it kind of makes sense. At least in a "here's how it works" sort of way if not in a "here's how it ought to work" sort of way. Which ties back to the prescriptive/descriptive thing you already said. I'm tired.

Don't worry, I didn't think you meant it was too long. Though it might've been, and this comment is also probably too long.

Lori - somehow missed this comment! Thanks! Is it really that busy? I picked the theme because I thought it looked so clean and crisp - like the newer newspaper sites. Yeah, I'm trying to get my older reviews posted up there, too, but that's understandably taking a lot of time.

The unplanned pregnancy films paper spoils the endings of all the films involved, so don't read it without watching them unless you're okay with that. But it was such a great paper to write.

Dad - hee! That would certainly save on publishing costs, wouldn't it? Think of all the now-classic literature that wouldn't exist, therefore that we wouldn't study, therefore that academics wouldn't write about...oh yes, we'd save a bundle on paper.

Kathy, I call bull on both the old and nothing to say counts. :p Glad to see you! And you're probably right. I've actually never listened to Neil Diamond at all. I've probably heard his songs at some point, but not to where I'd connect them with him. "Rock" is my default musical genre (because that's what everyone should be!), but when we're talking Idol, I should probably change my default to pop.

Dr. Veith commented on the Livejournal duplicate of this post (everything here is automatically crossposted there; why he found that one instead of this one, I don't know, but oh well); I'm going to copy his comment and my response over here as well.

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[his comment]

Fine thinking about aesthetics. Yes, judgments will vary, but notice that you are applying criteria, and they are objective, not subjective. We can value different criteria. This has some to do with (subjective) taste but also one's (objective) philosophy about things. I'm thinking that the breakthroughs and new styles in literature and the other arts have to do with calling our attention to other criteria and making us appreciate them too. You are studying aestheticism--check out Ruskin's aesthetic. I found him very helpful on lots of levels. (Gene Veith @Cranach)

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[my response]

Thanks for the comment, Dr. Veith. I definitely agree with being able to appreciate multiple criteria; perhaps you could say that works that meet a lot of different criteria are objectively better than works which only meet a few. Still, when it comes to contradictory criteria, I'm not sure how choosing between them is not subjective. You mention philosophy; I suppose the argument there is that your choice of criteria is going to depend on your overall worldview. That makes sense. I'm currently working through that, too, since my aesthetic taste runs to Modernist and Postmodernist works, but I'm not sure what that means in relation to my conservative Christian doctrines.

Thanks for the Ruskin tip. I've been reading about Ruskin a bit, but haven't delved into his original texts yet.

Oh, yeah, they say it's a singing contest, but it isn't. I mean, how many times does Simon say no to someone in auditions because he doesn't think they're marketable enough? He doesn't always say that, but that's what he means. Ultimately, they're giving the winner a million dollar contract, so "who can sell records" is always more important to the show than "who is good." I suspect this year, that's one of the Davids. Plus, if they were going just by singing, they wouldn't be dogging Syesha (and lots of other people over the years) for being "too Broadway." Some of the country's best singers are on Broadway. It's a "singing+personality+charisma+record-selling+pop-style" contest.

Abby - I wouldn't buy Syesha's record, because she's not my genre of music, but she's got the widest vocal range, the fewest pitch problems, and the purest tone quality of anyone on the show. Except David C., and they're such different singers that it's almost fruitless to compare them.

Interestingly, Jason hasn't been the Vote for the Worst candidate; I haven't checked all year, but I just did, and apparently Brooke was until this week. Weird. Anyway, you're right, too, about Jason's lack of musical knowledge. Though the most shocking to me was when David A. didn't know hardly any Beatles songs. What?! That was probably when he started losing my respect. ;)

Debbie - I haven't been voting, because I haven't been watching the show until the next day. I probably would've been voting for Brooke, though, since I usually feel fairly good about David C's chances.

And yeah, I'm sure Daughtry has done a lot better on his own than he would have with Idol's contract; I expect David C. would be in a similar situation. Honestly, I think I'd rather see David A. or Syesha win, and David C. come in second and get more creative control over what he does next.

Dad's okay with the move, I think (if he isn't, he's putting a positive face on it!)--Mom's pretty much ignoring it for now. And yeah, I figured when I was moving anyway, changing from school back to real world again, was my best chance to go do something crazy, like move to LA.

Archuleta is able to take songs and make them into something he can sing and not sound uncomfortable, though, which Jason hasn't been able to do. I am getting a little bored with him (David) over all, but I do still think his tone is beautiful. I love Brooke. She struggled a bit last week, just because Andrew Lloyd Webber songs were never meant to be sung by voices like hers. Of all the contestants this year (all top 24), David C. and Brooke are probably the only ones I'd listen to apart from the show.

I should probably watch tonight's show, eh? I've just about cut myself off from voting all year by procrastinating watching the episodes.

Debbie - :p

Abby - I did notice the lyric change in Over the Rainbow, but I don't remember how I registered it. I was mostly thinking "ukelele? Really?" Heh, I'll forgive you for being a Mariah Carey fan if you forgive me for having all of Celine Dion's albums until 1998.

I get what you're saying about the cheese factor; I do think Jason overdoes it too much of the time, which is why he's fallen off my favorites list. On David Archuleta, though, I think part of it just his youth. The reason I like him is his tone quality - I love that dusky sound. Brooke hasn't topped her "Let It Be," but she's got such a great coffeehouse vibe that sets her apart from everyone else that I can't bear to let her go yet. Hopefully I won't have to! But David Cook for the win, no contest. Except he'd have more freedom to make the record he wants to make if he doesn't win, so maybe I hope he come in second.

It's mostly a random bit of whismy. Godard tends to throw musical numbers into his films, even though none of them are really musicals. A Woman is a Woman comes closest, but it's really an anti-musical--the musical sections disrupt the narrative rather than further it.

And don't worry; I'm still not sure I get the film overall, and I've been reading about it like crazy (I'm sort of obsessed with it and writing a paper about it in a few weeks). If you haven't seen anything by Godard, don't start with this one. Start with Band of Outsiders.

I agree, Kristy's probably weaker overall than Michael, but I would've been really disappointed for her if she'd gone off this week, because she really did a great job, easily her best ever. And Syesha's good, I can't deny that, but she's just not my type.

And no, alright isn't a word in the technical sense. But people use it a lot, so I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes one before long.

Eric, I like that the heads are so small on the Margot poster. :) And good point about the vampire/gothic font. That makes a lot of sense, and now the poster's even cooler/deeper than it was before.

Jesse James was definitely on my short-list. Incredible film, too. That one, Zodiac, Into the Wild, and Sunshine probably would've been my runners-up.

I might have to go back and do Best of 2006 because there were some great posters that year.

Yeah, I know, I know. I'm still watching, but I haven't been watching live lately due to various conflicts. I'll try to at least do recaps if I'm not there to do the liveblogs.

I wasn't really that bummed that Michael Johns went off, though it was surprising. First time he'd even been in the bottom three! I don't know why, and I think I'm in the minority on this, but he never really struck me as authentic. Maybe it's that he never seemed to settle on a style (just as Carly hasn't, and she also seems inauthentic to me). They're both really great singers, I'm not denying that, but they don't move me the way that Brooke and David Cooke do.

There's still something about Carly that rubs me the wrong way, and I don't even know what it is. It's weird. Almost the same thing with Michael (and it has nothing to do with their not being American--I'm sure you know that!). I didn't post about the top ten because I watched it late and then just didn't feel like it, but I was not nearly as impressed with his We are the Champions as the judges were. Probably because singing Queen unironically sort of makes me laugh. Agree about Ramiele. I'm done with her unless she steps it up mightily. I'm all about Brooke, though. Even if she can't win (and I think you're right, she won't), I want her CD. It's pretty much about Brooke and David Cook for me right now, with David Archuleta a close third, though I'm still predicting him for the win.

Abby - I just looked up Wives and Daughters, and it's by Elizabeth Gaskell. Huh. I've never read anything by her, but one of my friends is currently planning to write her thesis on her--she's much more into Victorian fiction than I am. ;)

Holly - I've been listening to the Beatles a lot lately, and it keeps hitting me how much my current favorite indie bands owe them. I mean, seriously...they did everything first! So awesome. I'm not sure I would've noted the Clash similarity myself, if it weren't for Abby pointing it out; but they're British Invasion, too, I guess, just a little later. Maybe I'll post some Clash next week.

Cool! Glad you liked.

Hee. We had to read Sons and Lovers for Modern British Lit last summer. It was my favorite of the three D.H. Lawrence novels we read, but that wasn't saying much. It was like learning to breathe again when we switched to Virginia Woolf. I don't know Wives and Daughters.

That's awesome, Abby! SNL has been doing a good job picking bands on and off, even though it doesn't really make me laugh any more. I'm glad you like Vampire Weekend. You may not like Sons & Daughters as much. They're...noisier. ;)