The reason that the whole incident, to me, was sad is that Armond White is a critic I have defended, and at times championed, for being an extraordinarily vital voice: not a soft one, to be sure, but a demanding and even important one. As a critic, he is passionate, perverse, furious, infuriating, insightful, obtuse, humane, ruthless, fearless, out of his gourd, and, at his best, outrageously exciting to read. A lot of people despise him, because he can be a bully in print, and he wears the I-stand-alone perversity of his opinions far too proudly, like a military armband. Yet much of the dismissal of Armond is itself way too dismissive. He’s an embattled critic, but one who is often at war with the lockstep tendencies in our culture, and that’s a noble crusade. Sure, there are days when he says that a Transformers movie (or a bad Brian De Palma movie) is superior to anything by Richard Linklater or Steven Soderbergh, and you want to go, “Enough, stop!” But there are other days when he slices through the piety of adoration that surrounds certain movies. He’s a reckless master at unmasking cultural prejudices.
When you want to read a critic, it’s often because something in his or her voice inspires and incites you far beyond their good judgment (or lack of it). You want to crawl inside their head. You want to see things the way they do, even if you don’t agree with them. I’ve often remarked that I agreed with Pauline Kael even when I disagreed with her more than I did with other critics when I agreed with them. White, who idolizes Kael, is capable of provoking that kind of response. Not that I’d really compare him to Kael; he’s more from the take-no-prisoners literary-terrorist school, an heir to Lester Bangs and the young-gun James Wolcott of the ’70s Village Voice. When you read Armond, he isn’t always reasonable, but at times he’s something more enticing. He parades his unruly, belligerent perceptions like hardcore psychological rock & roll.
Interestingly, this is from an essay about why the author (Owen Gleiberman) voted to expel White from the New York Film Critics Circle after the latter heckled Steve McQueen at a press conference.
I took an existentialism course. As in many of my 2nd year philosophy courses, our instructor walked us through Plato to cover some ground before a day of Hegel before getting to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Anyway, while the instructor was explaining Plato's tripartite soul, a middle age student with a ponytail raised his hand. This fellow seemed to think she was telling us This is how your soul is and it is proven, or something.
"Yes," she said to him.
"I object to you dividing my soul," he said with the arrogance of a nineteen-year-old and a look that seemed to sayI just blew your mind!
The same year, in an epistemology class, while a different instructor was going over Plato's forms in the second class of the terms, a young man raised his hand and asked "Yeah... is this Forms thing proven?"
It's funny that Heart of Gold was meant to seque into "A Man Needs A Maid" because Heart of Gold is the Neil Young song I like the best and the latter is the one I like the least.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Holy shit, I literally JUST got home from my Calc final and the professor already has my grade posted
I'm not sure which is more impressive; the speed with which he graded those exams or the fact that I managed to pass the class!
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Comments
idk, like some kind of imposter or interloper or something
because i say i enjoy music, and i do, but not on the same level other people seem to
i couldn't even tell you the names of all the members of half my favourite bands
I don't think that knowing names of band members is required to love music.
Sam wore a gun in a holster at his belt; he also had wings and a halo.
A stellar critique, if I do say so myself.
but nor could i tell you interesting things about chord progressions and such, either
i feel like i should take music appreciation classes or something
Where are you
> Yes
> No
I took an existentialism course. As in many of my 2nd year philosophy courses, our instructor walked us through Plato to cover some ground before a day of Hegel before getting to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Anyway, while the instructor was explaining Plato's tripartite soul, a middle age student with a ponytail raised his hand. This fellow seemed to think she was telling us This is how your soul is and it is proven, or something.
"Yes," she said to him.
"I object to you dividing my soul," he said with the arrogance of a nineteen-year-old and a look that seemed to sayI just blew your mind!
The same year, in an epistemology class, while a different instructor was going over Plato's forms in the second class of the terms, a young man raised his hand and asked "Yeah... is this Forms thing proven?"
I can't even view my own music thread half the time because there are just so many embeds per page.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead