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Benicio Del Bore-O

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Posts posted by Benicio Del Bore-O

  6. Posted

    I'm just not having fun submitting anymore. It's not just that none of my phrases have been picked, especially when so many of you submit quality material. It's this:

     

    I'm tired of Scott picking anti-comedy schlock about a 25-30% of the time, whether it's an uninteresting (rhyming) babble, or a (deliberately?) bad and threadbare pun like "I'm really anal about my work, but then I am a proctologist." I'm not losing to 90's tv writing, whether it's ironic or not.

     

    The thing about anti-comedy is that it's all fancy footwork and pure taste. It can be really obnoxious hipster shit when it's bad. Or maybe I'm just not funny and that shit is. Either way, thanks to a few of you for the likes and the PMs.

     

    I'm a-headin' off down the road.

     

    Del Bore-O

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    "Actually," he said, donning his foodie neckbeard, "Northeastern Italy serves Cevapcici, so Margita Chelco probably was referring to this at one point."

     

    Then he immediately regretted wasting everyone's time with this useless fact, hit 'Post' anyway, and closed the tab.

    • Like 2

  19. Posted

    Good points. I'm thumbs-upping the posts because they're articulate and normative in a good way.

     

    But between what she said, and what her tone seemed to imply, I'll stand by my original take.

    I know I'm arguing from an outlandish position, not any of you. I've already explained what I heard her tone doing in between the lines. She could generally be a great person for all I know, but I'd say it's in spite of a love for reality tv (i.e. studies showing that reality tv viewers value things like vengeance, status, gossip, bullying etc more than most people, although the causation could go either direction).

     

    Elektra, I took Deanna at her word about 'no movies for 5 years' as opposed to 'no movies in theaters for 5 years'. I don't think movies are going to save humanity. I think proudly holding up reality tv compared to them is disgusting, especially from someone in the business.

     

    Did you just compare someone liking reality tv to someone making hateful statements under the guise of a joke?

     

    It sounds like you're tying together the wrong threads of comparison, here. Drop out the 'someone liking' bit.

    I am comparing reality tv to genuinely hateful jokes in their overall harmfulness.

    The former is subtle and politically undefined, the latter is obvious and politically defined.

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    "It's just a joke" is one of those things that people who are being dickheads like to say when they are called out for being dickheads. It's up there with "I'm just playing devil's advocate." It's code for "I'm a coward who wants to say racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/whatever shit and hide behind the joke so people don't think I'm actually that way."

     

    So what a joke's about matter, right?

    Agreed.

     

    "It's just a reality tv show"

  21. Posted

    So, basically, you don't like tv. Fair enough.

     

    I think you're still projecting a lot of your opinions about others onto something she said for 30 seconds about how she spends her time watching stuff she knows she likes instead of taking a risk on something she might not.

     

    That is some willful misinterpretation, buddy.

     

    When did I say I don't like tv, and how does what she said boil down to nothing but "here's how I like to spend my time" when she's an actor/writer/director/producer??

     

     

     

    Quick question then: do you have problems with June's voice?

     

     

    No, just how I interpret her tone, inflections, etc during those 30 seconds.

     

    Oh, also, taylorannephoto, you know she didn't see Dope, right, because she felt like 16 and Pregnant was a safer bet. So I fully support your gif quote there.

  22. Posted

    I think I see a few of your points Cameron H, particularly the point that she is obviously dismissing crap movies along with good ones. But I don't agree that Paul provoked this. She had considered all of this before, it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing. Paul just asked her to elaborate.

     

    I don't think her excuse about time investment holds water; I don't believe that she never watches 2 hours of tv, so that she never has the time to watch a movie. She was clearly comparing reality tv to movies, not good tv to bad movies. She made no mention of good tv.

     

    I think that reality tv (as part of celebrity culture) is a genuine vice, it's awful for humanity on several fronts, and there are (preliminary) studies backing this up. At some point they will fully prove that 'ironically' watching stupid reality tv 'people' so that you can feel smarter and better than them actually makes you stupider and more vicious while you do it. I would bet the farm on it. A guilty pleasure is one thing. Nothing but guilty pleasure is gross.

     

    I don't particularly agree with taylorannephoto that I'm calling her an asshole for "merely for expressing an opinion".

    You called the woman an "asshole" for sharing her opinion on movies.

    (Man or woman is irrelevant to me here, whatever you may be doing rhetorically with 'the woman' instead of 'her'. If the read on 'reality tv' is that it is girl-stuff, believe me that I'm just as critical of typical guy-stuff trash media as well. The superhero movie narrative is a different kind of 'dangerously stupid', but it's just as bad. Those guys who love nothing but that are assholes, too.)

     

    Here's why I don't agree:

    Deanna has acted, written, directed and produced. She basically bragged about: 5 years, no movies, and reality/trash tv instead. Her example was a movie (Steve Jobs) by a sensitive and intelligent director (who I am not a super-fan of, that isn't my point here). She's in entertainment, her opinion contains values about who makes worthwhile stuff, and she's a public person. So, yeah, I will pass judgement on her and her opinion, which makes her a philistine and a snob at once (quite the combo), not to mention dismissive of someone exponentially more talented than she is. Not only did she miss a bunch of important movies as someone in the field, but she's a comedian who missed Bridesmaids, The World's End, Pitch Perfect, What We Do in the Shadows, etc.

     

    There is an anti-art, anti-intellectual trait of priding oneself on watching only schlock, and being contemptuously dismissive of other content, (for being pretentious, or not cool enough, or boring etc). It's a thing people do. At some point the irony dissipates and that's just what you like and value now: garbage.

    This may not be precisely what she's doing (i.e. she watched neither good nor bad movies), but it is essentially what she's doing because she swapped Twelve Years a Slave, Zero Dark Thirty, Before Midnight, Spotlight and Inside Llewyn Davis for voyeuristic slumming, which doesn't disappoint her as readily......... ffs

    Big, popular, unchallenging, ego-stroking tentpole movies and reality tv are defended to the death by the same people who won't see anything challenging or subtle or unconventional etc. I call them assholes.

     

    (...yes, there is/was an academic argument for this suspicion of "high art", or critique of the 'tradition of quality' that started out well, by refusing to value only 'luxury highbrow art for the rich'. It went through a few iterations in music, fine art, film, and so on. But the argument drifts into nihilism at some point when the highbrow stuff has something to say and doesn't make money, and the profitable trash is what supports the status quo. Academic nihilism is still nihilism, and this argument that "it's all evaluatively the same" is philistine dogshit.

    And as far as media control goes, there may not be many 'folk-art movies' that can break through and enter people's eyeballs, but there's zero 'folk-art reality tv'. She missed Fruitvale Station, too. That was made for $900K and it had flaws, so it probably would have disappointed her. She watched Kardashians instead.)

     

    Anyway, I'll shut up about this now. I understand why this doesn't rise to 'asshole' status for most people.

     

    Oh, also, our country is in serious danger of electing a reality tv star to the presidency.

  23. Posted

    Listen specifically to what she actually says and how she says it. Don't just try to remember, give it another listen. Then tell me if you want to defend her opinion, attitude and values as beyond critique. Go ahead and critique my opinion, attitude and values on this, but give a few reasons, because she didn't say this off the cuff, she meant it.

     

    Is this really a matter of merely "different tastes"? Is media just ice cream flavors, or does what you spend your time watching and what you value affect you as a person? Is valuing a steady indulgence in trash/reality tv, all while cultivating a self-important disdain for media that's at least trying to go deeper (Steve Jobs was her example) because it's never good enough for you, something that a narcissistic philistine would value? She makes media for chrissakes. Guilty pleasures are fun, yes, but her entire diet is junk food.

    Is this narcissism? Does she watch only stupid stuff so she can feel smarter than it? Does she dismiss stuff that aims higher as not up to her standard, so that she can imagine her standard as supreme?

     

    I'm not trying to thread-hijack here. But if you think I'm entirely wrong, be specific at least.

     

    And I'm criticizing a media professional's public opinion about media.

    Let's not react like I'm criticizing a random person for their guess at something outside of their specialization.

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