Blogs, Pretentions and Blog Pretentions

One of my favourite things to rant about is how annoying other people’s pretentions are. For example, I recently borrowed the Season 2 Scrubs DVD off a friend, and tried to watch the special features, but had to turn if off after five minutes because I couldn’t bear to hear one more smug statement about how great they were because they resisted the low-brow condescension of the laugh track and how they were SO different from the traditional multi-camera sitcom.

The Scrubs episode they did where they imagined what the show would like if were a multi-camera sitcom styled show, really rang hollow for me, because I think it revealed how closely aligned Scrubs is with the ‘conventional’ sitcom tradition. Let’s be clear: I don’t consider that to be a bad thing, and that is not to say that Scrubs isn’t different from the typical sitcom- clearly their aesthetic and structural choices differentiate them from the multi-camera comedy format, as well as the oft cited fast pace of the show and of course, the show’s very good writing. I also LOVE Scrubs, so it pains me to say these things- but I find touting these differences as somehow showing a superiority over shows that are more ‘conventionally’ inclined, kind of sickening- NOT because those aesthetic choices don’t have merit as enhancing the Scrubs experience, but because I think it is highly hypocritical to take such a rarefied stance, particularly for a show that is as emotionally manipulative and as reliant upon what have now become show ‘tics’, as Scrubs – i.e. the show has it’s own structural and aesthetic cliches, its own go-to repetitive jokes. To say that they are superior and less condescending to the viewer (as is implied by some interview with John C. McGinley- Dr Cox), is within itself a condescension that is not erased by the fact that they engineered them or that they are unusual from the norm.

But I digress. I really didn’t mean to rant about Scrubs special features (which I will never, ever watch again- the same thing happened to me when I watched the Scrubs special features on Season One… and Season Three- so really, it was just shame on me for burning myself again).

The point I was getting to was, that as much as I like to talk about how high/low cultural divides bug me to no end (particularly because such arguments vindicate my trashy tastes), I am often just as hypocritically pretentious as the people I complain about. For example if you were to ask me what song I was just listening to- I would totally consider lying if you were a stranger. Instead of immediately answering ‘Nelly Furtado’s Maneater’, I would probably say something like ‘um…’ and then think really hard about what cliche I don’t want to project: hmmm Can? too weird/pretentious/no one ever knows what I’m talking about, Britney? too pop, and then I’ll have to justify why I was listening to her, MIA? too hipster and too many people look down their nose at her, Eagles of Death Metal? strangely neutral and hard to pigeon hole a girl with, yet… I might as well answer QOTSA, Slint? that would REALLY be lying, Bowie? a largley unimpeachable choice, in fact is he SO unimpeachable it becomes a meaningless response?, Arcade Fire?- I wonder if they’re the new indie cliche?, Any number of girl singer songwriters- too girly. At this point I get tired and just tell the truth. However, the fact that I even think these things reveals a depth of pretentiousness (plus reveals again, how I over think things) that I’m trying my best to tamp down all the time.

Note to self- there’s a post in here somewhere about music acts that become ‘big’ in tiny internet communities, thus becoming too ‘mainstream’ for said communities, even though the rest of the world have no idea who these acts are.

But I digress again! So 1) we’ve established that I’m hypocritical and pretentious, 2) That I over think things 3)… well this whole thing is about the fact that I read this post by K-Punk, and suddenly my open appreciation of Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack was rendered not at entirely shameful by K-Punk’s careful use of analysis and big words. So I get to keep my love of pop AND my pretentions- oh happy day!

In other blog news, I came across Esoteric Rabbit the other day, and I think I’m in bloggy love (i.e my blog loves his blog- my blog has very fine tuned emotions didn’t you know? Plus my blog also has very strong aspirational feelings towards his blog). Coming across new blogs that I really like always makes me come away with lame thoughts like “I should make my blog funnier/more thought-provoking/more cleverly observational about life/more intelligent”, however I think I have to come to terms with the fact that my blog, is well, my blog, and I’ll never be able to change it (poor little thing).

Hmm, this is becoming quite the long post- I’m getting to my last point, don’t worry guys (sorry for the lack coherency, my brain is bouncing around like a little, um frog).

So, while I’ve been writing all this crap- I’ve also been thinking: jeez, blogs are such an interesting medium. Not just for the obvious reasons of interactivity and nicheyness (just pretend it’s a word)- the latter is particularly why I love blogs- they can be so much more informative and interesting than traditional media sources (one of my other pet hates is when people hate on blogs or wikipedia by repeating some widely accepted phrase about how they can’t possibly be any good because they can be written by anyone- SHUT UP you don’t know what you’re talking about). The thing that makes blogs (I speak particularly about ‘personal’ blogs here) so interesting to me is that they’re such a self-reflexive medium. Blogs seem to engender an uber self-awareness of one’s own behaviour- AND more interestingly of one’s blogging behaviour. For instance right now I AM WRITING ABOUT BLOGGING AND MY BLOGGING BEHAVIOUR- OH MY GOD!!!! I think this is a really interesting aspect of blogging- however since this is such a long post I’ll stop here- the only thing left to do is put up an excerpt from Jobe’s blog (I’m sorry, do you mind?) which I came across when I first stumbled upon his blog. That first encounter left me slightly offended, but mostly bewildered, and in an attempt to clear the confusion I randomly clicked on an archive and found this:

This Is That Post
from What’s This On My Hand? by Jobe
This is that post where I tell a boring story about my childhood that links with something stupid I have done in the past week or so in a way that is intended to be humorous and acutely observational but is really just boring to my readers.

This is that post.

Another really interesting example is this entry from Tim’s Blog that I came across recently also.

Have a lovely weekend guys, I’m going to be holed up actually doing some work (! finally) that has fallen to the wayside. I hope everyone’s weekend is much more exciting than mine.