Althouse: At the Black-and-Chocolate Café...

January 24, 2014

At the Black-and-Chocolate Café...

... throw us some scraps.

18 comments:

Meade said...: Dynastic duck dogs.; 1/24/14, 1:41 PM
Ernst Stavro Blofeld said...: Tail blur.; 1/24/14, 1:41 PM
Ex-prosecutor said...: My guess is that even a quark-sized speck of food will set off a mad scramble even before hitting the floor.; 1/24/14, 1:46 PM
madAsHell said...: I was denied access to the website for about 15 minutes. I encountered numerous 503 service errors.

I was able to pull up Fox News, but I couldn't find any pictures of our hostess being thrown into the back of a police car. I'll assume all is well, and the problem was with my internet provider.; 1/24/14, 1:58 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I was seeing all of Google down for a few minutes, including other blogs and Gmail. I was a bigger thing than just this blog, but it didn't last long.; 1/24/14, 2:05 PM
Wince said...: "Throw me a frickin' bone here."; 1/24/14, 2:15 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Concur with ESB. Love the tailio.; 1/24/14, 2:22 PM
traditionalguy said...: Someone once asked if dogs go to Heaven when they die.

Well yes, it wouldn't be called Heaven if there were no Labs.; 1/24/14, 2:31 PM
Anonymous said...: You want to see something absolutely pathetic?

From the perspective of excellence and quality of expression, consider how very far American music and dance culture and art have fallen, and we hardly even realize it.

Here's the evidence:

Compare this with this

Or compare this with this.

These two poor pathetic American women are so clueless, they don't even know how stiff, bland, unattractive, and how very far from magnetic, they truly are.

Paglia is right on. Give me Brazil any day. Or India.; 1/24/14, 2:32 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "I was a bigger thing than just this blog, but it didn't last long."

I have now returned to my former size, smaller than this blog.; 1/24/14, 2:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Do you like to "get small", Ann?

It's a wild, wild drug.

Very dangerous for kids, thought, because they get really small.; 1/24/14, 2:54 PM
madAsHell said...: You want to see something absolutely pathetic?

ummmm....I'm guessing that you are outside the target demographic. Yes, I don't understand what emotions might swirl within a 14 year old girl either.

I'm sure Elvis elicited many of the same comparisons. Remember when the TV cameras would only show him from the waist up??; 1/24/14, 2:59 PM
Naked Surfer said...: “The Spaceship Seems to be Following Me Closer of Late. It Seems Almost Playful” ~ Betamax, Cherry Blossoms, Pigeons. Bus Exhaust.

If the spaceShips Are – not all Most playFull, then you cannot take Aggression personally, because that’s vanity, and they don’t like that. If the Spaceships move beyond Almost Playful to All Most Play Full with you personally, you commend their volubility. And keep watching.

I cannot do dogs in the kitchen yet. Or did I?; 1/24/14, 3:07 PM
madAsHell said...: Rush Limbaugh Responds to Obama: “I Continue to Live Rent Free in His Head”

Another unforced error. Why in the world would you acknowledge your antagonist? You just make him more powerful!!; 1/24/14, 3:09 PM
Ann Althouse said...: @Quayle Not fair to compare a live performance to a movie that has been edited.

Movie actresses are chosen for their facial beauty, and the dancing is made to look perfect through the use of editing. The voices are overdubbed, perhaps by other, less pretty singers.

But if you want to portray it as about Americans versus people in India or Brazil… my question is why did you feel like doing that?; 1/24/14, 4:09 PM
Anonymous said...: I'll grant you the point about live versus edited.

And in the Indian examples, the voices are undeniably overdubbed, and Bollywood films unashamedly so do.

But on the issue of who is selected and for what reason, I wonder if you are forgetting that Brittany, Myley, Justin, The Back Street Boys, the latest heart-throb boy band, the latest chick-pack girl band, etc., are also carefully "selected" to be packaged, demographically balanced, marketed, and sold, perhaps even more so than movie stars.

Yes, you can argue the superiority of the "live triple threat". You may even argue that getting straight “B”s in looks, dancing and singing shouldn't be compared to getting “A"s in looks and dancing but an “incomplete” in signing. I'm not sure I agree, because I'm discussing the issue of what we, the American public, receives and accepts as art worthy of our adulation, time and money.

I’m interested in the overall artistic expressions, attempted and carried off.

But anyway, to your last questions: this all stems from something I sort of fell into.

(Here it is, friends – my dirty little secret) I've been deep diving in Bollywood movies on Netflix. It started out with one film "suggested" on NetFlix, I watched it and it was actually pretty entertaining, and one thing led to another, and now our NetFlix account shows nothing but Indian movies. So l’ve had not choice but to systematically work through them. It has been fascinating!

And all throughout, I kept being reminded of Camille Paglia's writings and statements about the flatness and deadness of American artistic culture (and her extension of that to eroticism and sexuality. Paglia points to Brazil as an example of where she considers such to be much more robust and vibrant. I kept trying to find comparable evocative American examples, and I kept failing (as, apparently, has Paglia.)

So, anyway, just thought I’d share some preliminary data points... in the New Jersey overstatement tone with which I am often plagued.; 1/24/14, 4:53 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "And all throughout, I kept being reminded of Camille Paglia's writings and statements about the flatness and deadness of American artistic culture (and her extension of that to eroticism and sexuality. Paglia points to Brazil as an example of where she considers such to be much more robust and vibrant."

I agree that American pop performers have been pretty dull for a long time, especially the biggest ones. But I loathe these racial/ethnic comparisons about who exudes sexuality better. You're seeing the end product, which is processed through commerce and technology. It's not in the substance of the people, or at least so I would presume.; 1/24/14, 5:19 PM
Anonymous said...: "You're seeing the end product, which is processed through commerce and technology. It's not in the substance of the people, or at least so I would presume."

Oh, I agree. But everyone has the same access to commerce and technology, so doesn't that cancel it self out across the board?

On the other hand, it is probably just the exotic that is (momentarily) catchy.

(So do you hate the comparisons when it is Paglia doing it also?); 1/24/14, 8:02 PM