Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

In my day, never was longer.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

This really is a full service blog.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Good Riddance

Open Thread: Good Riddance

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I LOL’d, cuz I’m old. Esquire‘s sex columnist, Stacey Woods, decided to fill the year-end news gap by posting “27 Things to Leave Behind in 2014“:

1. Liking Things Ironically
The Baby Boomers rebelled against their dorky parents. We Gen Xers, however, couldn’t rebel against our parents since rebelling against your parents had been done, so instead, we cultivated irony; it was all we could do. This subtle, handcrafted irony, however, has fallen into the hands of subsequent generations who have been misinterpreting ever since, and now we have dorky a cappella singing competitions on TV. Ironically, that’s what happens when you try to be ironic — you end up making things a million times worse. Therefore, all intentional irony should be abolished until everyone’s clear on what’s good and what’s bad. It’ll probably take about five years…

Looked for a copy of Maddy Prior’s Acapella Stella, but couldn’t find it on YouTube. Had not released how fierce the a capella fandom could be, until I read the Esquire comments…

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  4. 4.

    raven

    I love this one:

    12. Strong, Amazing Woman
    It’s become increasingly rare to hear women described without these two pat qualifiers. Maybe we could come up with two other ones, or maybe — better yet — we could let the strength and amazing-ness of women be quietly understood in a way that is truly strong and amazing. In the meantime, here’s what you can say when describing a woman: “I want you to meet my friend Donna. She’s really great.”

    We have a lot of 40 something friends and they are just all over this shit. In fact, I’m sick of the term “amazing” in any context.

  5. 5.

    max

    This subtle, handcrafted irony, however, has fallen into the hands of subsequent generations who have been misinterpreting ever since, and now we have dorky a cappella singing competitions on TV. Ironically, that’s what happens when you try to be ironic — you end up making things a million times worse.

    That’s not irony, dear, that’s merely bad taste.

    max
    [‘And America has always had bad taste in abundance.’]

  11. 11.

    MikeJ

    The world survived Manhattan Transfer.

    I like the idea of nobody really knowing if stuff is really liked or only ironically liked. It’s heightening the contradictions, moving us to a place where people like stuff or don’t, and aren’t concerned about what’s popular.

    And Mizzou, you’re not fooling anyone with that PSA. “The columns stand for you”? Are they about to graduate another virgin?[1]

    [1] The quad at Mizzou has six columns from the original admin building that was destroyed in a fire. Tradition holds that there is one column for every virgin that has graduated.

  20. 20.

    Dead Ernest (Thought Wrangler)

    This is probably an Internet Travesty, but I am not aware of all Internet Traditions.

    @Jl (who said, in part);

    I’ve read that spray and inhaler decongestants are addictive in some people, and that has nothing to do with nasal or sinus congestion.

    That is *very* interesting.
    Thank you Jl.
    I’ll see what I can find on the subject.

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    I’m not so keen on Stacey Woods’ little listicle myself. What is more passé than listing things that are now passé?

  28. 28.

    Dead Ernest (Thought Wrangler)

    @Baud:

    But new thread, so yay!

    And my apologies for the transgression to you Baud. I simply didn’t want to miss the opportunity to than Jl.

    /Ok, y’all can have your bases back now

  29. 29.

    MattR

    @raven: Heard a comic last night making fun of people who use the phrase “at the end of the day” especially when they follow it with generic statements that you can’t really argue with.

    ex. At the end of the day, it’s all love.

  33. 33.

    raven

    @MattR: I can remember the first time I heard it. I was in a meeting with a bunch of software peeps from India and one of them said that. I didn’t know what the fuck he meant.

  36. 36.

    Console

    Millennials don’t like things ironically to be rebellious. We like things ironically to prove we are more fun, diverse, and hipper than you are.

    Which is how you expose the old white condescension inherent in number 2.

  38. 38.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:
    @bk:

    That’s sad. I loved the Everly Brothers.

    My own younger brothers worked up a duo that did remarkably good covers of EB songs. I’m sure they’re both feeling a whiff of anno domini tonight.

  41. 41.

    Gin & Tonic

    @raven: Shit, yeah. Their first (only?) Grammy for a song with lyrics written by Jon Hendricks, FFS. How good at vocalese are you if you have to have somebody else write the lyrics?

  43. 43.

    MikeJ

    @raven: .

    I was in a meeting with a bunch of software peeps from India and one of them said that.

    1999, London, a German project manager said it in a meeting I was in. And yes, it was all software people.

  44. 44.

    raven

    @Gin & Tonic: They were a band. I liked them. The rest is bullshit as far as I’m concerned. Motherfuckers were fawning about Peter Fucking Frampton and I didn’t say nuttin.

  46. 46.

    jl

    I’m not sure I understand what ‘Liking things ironically’ means.

    I’ve noticed a lot of humor and advertising pitches that take an ironical distanced stance on gluttony, boozing, materialism, status symbols, selfishness, and other modern crassnesses. Is that what it means?

    I guess that would be OK if it has been an ironical and distanced stance that allows us to indulge periodically in these behaviors, while warning us away from making habits of them. But, IMVHO, it has been used as a flimsy excuse for making habits of them.

    So, if that is what ‘Liking things ironically’ means, then I agree.

  48. 48.

    raven

    One of the most popular jazz recordings of 1980, “Birdland” brought the group their first Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance, and Janis Siegel was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices for her arrangement of “Birdland”.

    I liked “Chanson D’Amour” and “Tuxedo Junction” too.

  52. 52.

    jl

    @Console:

    ” People being “ghetto” that aren’t from the ghetto ”

    I agree with that number 2 as well. But I am so not ghetto, I don’t even know enough ghetto to know how to be ghetto, other than aping people who aren’t ghetto, and never have been, but are trying to be ghetto themselves.

    For instance, the ghastly ‘hella’. Which I’ve never used, except as (I hope) an obvious joke. But I read recently that ‘hella’ comes from Southern California, and not from Compton. I have no idea where ‘hella’ comes from. Thank goodness, the phrase seems to be dying out around my area, among them dang kids today.

  53. 53.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: @jl: Liking things ironically is choosing PBR not because it is the only beer you can afford, but rather because it is bad beer. Or knowing Nickelback sucks but listening to it anyway to revel in its awfulness and one’s own superiority.

  56. 56.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @jl: I think it just means doing things because they’re dorky, rather than because they’re cool. Wearing plaid pajamas, for example, which in fact is a thing, something the idiot Republicans ranting about “pajama boy” missed entirely. “We know it’s dorky, that’s why we like it” would be the response.

    Ironic mustaches became popular that way. They looked stupid and retro, but that’s what was cool. Or became so.

    In fact a lot of trends and fashion are born that way. Long hair and sideburns were actually a sort of ironic playing with the way people looked in the 1800s, back in the 1960s. Sgt. Peppers was a good example of that. It wasn’t just out of the blue, at first it was “Hey, look how funny these people looked a hundred years ago!” and then “Actually… that’s kind of cool!”

    That’s what I think it means anyway.

  57. 57.

    browser

    @Baud: Well, I suppose it depends on why you’re cheering. If you’re cheering because you want to show appreciation for the effort, it’s not ironic. If you’re cheering to make the performer feel like they’re a singing sensation when they’re not, then it’s ironic.

    But I think non-aggressive sarcasm falls under irony. I also can be a jerk sometimes. YMMV.

  60. 60.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    England needs 14 runs to avoid the follow on and they’ve got two wickets left. They’re relying on Stuart Broad, debutant leg spinner Scott Borthwick and injured debutant Boyd Rankin.

  61. 61.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Baud: It’s rednecks back when despising and ridiculing people with long hair and beards — and now look at them.

    It takes a while, it’s not instant. First they fight it, then they hate it, then they laugh at it, then they’re wearing it.

    Great example here.

  62. 62.

    max

    @Omnes Omnibus: Liking things ironically is choosing PBR not because it is the only beer you can afford, but rather because it is bad beer. Or knowing Nickelback sucks but listening to it anyway to revel in its awfulness and one’s own superiority.

    Or alternatively, one merely is liking some form of crap (like PBR), and one wishes to claim one has good taste, when one, in fact, does not.

    max
    [‘It’s like hate-watching, without the hate.’]

  63. 63.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: Slumming with an edge of mockery. The city in which I went to college had a number of working class bars near the paper mills. Students would go to them on occasion. Some went to get away from the cloistered feeling one gets at a small college and because the pool tables were better. Some went to be vaguely superior to the “townies.”

  67. 67.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    And there goes Borthwick. England only needs two runs to force Australia to bat next but they’re still cooked.

  69. 69.

    jl

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Thanks. But, are you two X-ers or are you just X-er ‘wanna be’s?

    I need to hear it from an X-er. I think I am too old to be an X-er, and just shy of boomerosity. A commenter once said I was part of Generations Jones, which I never heard of before or since.

    Anyway, if that is what liking things ironically means, that seems a lot better than the toxic false irony I was talking about. Maybe that it a boomer thing, or trans-generational post-50s thing.

  72. 72.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Baud:

    Actually, there’s a whole level of irony in Ralph Wiggums being one’s favorite Simpsons character.

  74. 74.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jl: Depends how you define Xers. Demographically, I miss it by about 4 months. If you want to go by the cultural construct of Xers starting somewhere between ’61-’63, then I am in it.

    @ranchandsyrup: I first came across the word among skiers.

  76. 76.

    jl

    Who wudda thunk it? I should have done my research first.

    Generation Jones
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones

    Anyway, you dang kids tiddee! Go ahead and sit around in your plaid jammies and listen to that Nickelbuck or whoever he is, I guess he can’t be worse than that Kenny G fella. I’m gonna take a dose a my tonic and go yell at some clouds.

  78. 78.

    jl

    @ranchandsyrup:

    From your link:

    “hella. Originated from the streets of San Francisco in the Hunters Point neighborhood. It is commonly used in place of “really” or “very” when describing something.”

    Well, Hunter’s Point is about as ghetto as you can get anywhere. I had no idea it was an SF Bay Area thing. Thanks.

  79. 79.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Baud:

    I tried to pretend I only liked the 1980s version of “Flash Gordon” ironically, but I was lying. I love it because of its gigantic, flashy cheesiness.

    @jl:

    I’m guessing it’s a Valley Girl thing if it came from So Cal. It sounds much more Valley than Compton.

  84. 84.

    ruemara

    Roommate kitty just bonked me in the face. I’d almost believe she now likes me, except for the whole clawing me when I reach down to offer her the pets she just asked for thing. But it was nice to have a kitty bonk on the stairs, like when Kage and Takkun were here. Now those were kittens who knew how to make full use of the fun playtime to be had on a stairwell.

  85. 85.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @jl: GenXer, gawd no. Right smack in the middle of the boomers, here. So yes who knows, but I know it’s liking something, rather than hating it. “That’s so totally uncool, it’s cool”, basically.

  86. 86.

    Maeve

    Off topicness:

    i bought myself a Lenovo yoga 11 inch laptop for Xmas, with windows 8.1
    And if I try to access this site (with IE, Firefox, chrome or opera) I get th message,” Could not determine user from environment”, which the power of google tells me is a WordPress thing.

    Yes, it’s my fault for getting Windoze 8.1, but for work related reasons I need windows, and an Air Mac with fusion and windows would have set me back $500 more.

    Writing this on my iPad, btw.

    I’m not sure this can be fixed from my end but suggestions welcome.

  87. 87.

    ranchandsyrup

    @Omnes Omnibus: I grew up around Tahoe. Still hear it in Bay Area and Sacramento.

    @jl: one if the defs is that it’s the analog to boston people using wicked. I never took it on as a verbal tic. I was a “dude” dude. Which was awful. For everyone.

  89. 89.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @jl: “55.4 Lyon to Broad, 1 run, stays back in the crease and flicks from off stump to deep cover.”

  90. 90.

    jl

    @ranchandsyrup: I admit to using ‘dude’, but only when I need a euphemism. Sometimes used in good nature, sometimes not (especially with certain clueless ‘dudes’ both male and female in the extended family).

  91. 91.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @ruemara:

    I’d almost believe she now likes me, except for the whole clawing me when I reach down to offer her the pets she just asked for thing.

    She likes you. Charlotte bites us if we pet her too long (which can sometimes be about a nanosecond), but she still sleeps propped up on my butt every night.

  93. 93.

    p.a.

    @Omnes Omnibus: aren’t those born between ’49-’64 considered boomers? When did we lose the ’60’s component? As an aside, and I’ll check the records, I believe between 1949-1964 the Yankees lost the pennant twice; ’54 and ’59.

  94. 94.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Maeve:

    Could not determine user from environment

    I’m not sure but I think it means that you’ve merged with the site and have become indistinguishable from the body of the blog itself.

  95. 95.

    jl

    I say, what should be done about the cricket subculture? Maybe that will be the next column out of Brooks. Seems to be spreading and corrupting our precious youth, bodily fluids, and etc.

    Edit: from Wikipedia History of Cricket:

    ” The first reference to cricket being played as an adult sport was in 1611, when two men in Sussex were prosecuted for playing cricket on Sunday instead of going to church. ”

    Good Lord! I suspected as much. A public menace!

  97. 97.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Mitchell Johnson bowls Rankin cleanly and so now we are off to tea. After that, the Aussies can start batting for as long as they want before declaring, considering that it’s still the second day.

  98. 98.

    Suffern ACE

    Oh my. I thought Ross Doubthat or someone like that made himself an up and comer young person of note ten years ago declaring that 9-11 killed irony forever. We had a few years of earnest sincerity. I swear I remember earnest sincerity being promoted as an antidote to something or other. I think it was Seinfeld.

  99. 99.

    Roger Moore

    @jl:
    Follow on is an important concept in cricket. A test match lasts a maximum of five days, and if it hasn’t finished by then it’s a draw, even if one side is so far behind they have no realistic chance of winning. To avoid this, teams that have what they think is an insurmountable lead will “declare”, ending their innings early to make sure there’s enough time left for the match to end. A twist on this is that if the team that bats first has a 200+ run lead after the first innings, they can demand the other team bat first in the second innings. When the trailing team is forced to bat twice in a row, this is called following on, and it gives the team with the lead a tactical advantage because they don’t have to worry about choosing when to declare; if they come to bat again- they might not if the other team can’t make up their deficit in the second innings- they know exactly how many runs they need to win.

  102. 102.

    Eric U.

    I kinda like bad beer, in a non-ironic way. I used to buy wiedemann’s, which you could buy for $3 a case in the mid ’80. It was a bit ragged, which is a technical term certian beer snobs like to use. I think PBR is drinkable, and I think the hipsters might like it because it’s rather mild in comparison to a lot of beers.

  105. 105.

    WereBear

    @p.a.: That always irritated me: how can anyone possibly equate those who were teens in the 60’s with people who were teens in the ’70’s?

    Two totally different maturation environments. I should know. My first husband was born in ’49 and my second in the late fifties.

  107. 107.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @p.a.:

    In a 2012 article for the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, George Masnick wrote that the “Census counted 82.1 million” Gen Xers in the U.S. The Harvard Center uses 1965 to 1984 to define Gen X so that Boomers, Xers and Millennials “cover equal 20-year age spans”.[14] Masnick concluded that immigration has filled in any birth year deficits during low fertility years of the late 1960s and early 1970s [14][15]

    Jon Miller at the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the University of Michigan wrote that “Generation X refers to adults born between 1961 and 1981” and it “includes 84 million people” in the U.S.[15][16]

    The 2011 publication “The Generation X Report”, based on annual surveys used in the Longitudinal Study of today’s adults, finds that Gen Xers, who are defined in the report as people born between 1961 and 1981, are highly educated, active, balanced, happy and family oriented. The study dispels the materialistic, slacker, disenfranchised stereotype associated with youth in the 1970 and 80s.[17] Various questions and responses from approximately 4,000 people who were surveyed each year from 1987 through 2010 made up the study.[18]

    Link Definitions vary. But take me for an example, I was born in August of ’64 and Boomer touchstones like the JFK, MLK, and RFK assassinations, the moon landing, the TET offensive, and Woodstock have no personal resonance for me. How can I be culturally a part of that generation? Hell, my parents are just a couple of years too old to be Boomers.

  108. 108.

    jl

    @Eric U.:

    ” I kinda like bad beer, ”

    All beer is above average.

    I heard that saying at a local beer festival, right before they judged some lager beer contest.

  111. 111.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Roger Moore: The follow up (follow on?) to that is that Australia has been extremely reluctant to enforce a follow on since it blew up in their faces in a match against India in 2001. India went bonkers in their second innings, declaring on 7 for 657 and then the Aussie batting collapsed. The claim is that their bowlers were tired after the first innings and so they have been strongly inclined to just go ahead and bat for a while and then declare in a position where they think they can get all ten wickets.

    In this case it’s really not going to matter since the first innings was complete by tea on the second day of the test. So my guess is that there’s plenty of time left to get all twenty wickets of the second innings.

  112. 112.

    ranchandsyrup

    @jl: I had to actively keep myself from using it multiple times in a sentence for a spell. It was like my commanding officer was Dude and I the first and last thing that came out of my mouth was dude.

  113. 113.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @jl: A UK columnist in the Guardian a few years back was explaining to Brits how people in the US saw them, and she wrote “First, you have to understand that “football hooligan” in America sounds about as menacing as “lawn tennis ruffian”.

    In reality it’s a different story of course, it’s just the vocabulary that loses something on its trip across the water.

  114. 114.

    max

    @jl: I need to hear it from an X-er. I think I am too old to be an X-er, and just shy of boomerosity. A commenter once said I was part of Generations Jones, which I never heard of before or since.

    {waves}

    ‘Liking things ironically’ is synonymous with ‘bullshitting’. (‘I can’t stop watching this incredibly awful soap opera! I’m addicted! The irony!’ etc. etc.)

    What Pilgrim was referring to up there with the Sergeant Peppers was just ‘playful’ (or merely fun).

    max
    [‘There’s also ‘liking things the cool kids don’t like because the cool kids are wrong’ – but evidently saying so would be too confrontational or some shit.’]

  116. 116.

    Suffern ACE

    @Eric U.: it’s an underdog beer. Drinking PBR is like rescuing a time when there was more than Miller and Anheuser Busch and the Right Wing Coors on the market. Which is kind of where things looked like they were heading in 1994 when hipsters adopted PBR. The love of Apple was cut from the same nostalgia.

    Shame them if you must, but hipsters liked a lot more beers than PBR and they have saved beer and spirits from domination by three companies.

  118. 118.

    MikeJ

    @Omnes Omnibus: Scarves are good when it is cold. Scarves are doubly good if you are supporting your local football team. Scarves are ridiculous if it is 90° out and you’re marching to the football game because your league doesn’t understand that football is a winter sport.

  119. 119.

    p.a.

    @WereBear: these are all kind of social constructs/pop sociology, just lazy compartmentalization. I’m a late boomer (1959) so grew up in a very different world than someone born in ’49, ’50. Black power, Wallace, Kent State and Vietnam vs. duck and cover, Tail Gunner Joe, Ike and Elvis.

  120. 120.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @max: That’s a good distinction. I’m sure there are parts I don’t get. Actually though part of what I meant is that it was at least a little bit like that. We all dressed up in 1890s clothes once for a band photo, and it was definitely still like “Isn’t this stupid looking? Look how fuddy-duddy and old fashioned this is!”

    And the next thing you know it’s not just for goofing around for photos but the way you dress for school.

  121. 121.

    Suffern ACE

    A Capella is cool. It’s not like its barbershop quartets square or human beat box nerdy. It’s not even retro. How can it be ironic?

  122. 122.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Cassidy: Well and it’s also a matter of local fashion. In keeping with the theme here. If everyone around you dresses that way it seems totally normal. Never wore one when I lived in NYC, years before that, where it’s even colder.

  127. 127.

    Bruuuuce

    @Lee: I like a capella. That isn’t it; it’s multipart harmony, with instrumentation. Oh, and Autotune, which is Right Out. Unless you’re the Party Posse, of course.

  128. 128.

    Suffern ACE

    That said, an ironic love of tacky things is probably why the science, history, learning and arts channel have devolved into nothing but aliens and masons shows and men skinning squirrels on TV.

  129. 129.

    Amir Khalid

    @raven:
    “At the end of the day” is almost always a meaningless filler phrase, like “when all is said and done” and “in the end” and shit like that.

  131. 131.

    Suffern ACE

    @Omnes Omnibus: yes. it’s probably and art form, like teaching a four year old to not mess up her hair so she’ll look elegant walking down the run way is an art. It’s just not what has been traditionally considered a fine art form in western culture.

  133. 133.

    grishaxxx

    O, I am so fking old, I think most of these cross-offs were past sell date a couple of years ago. I do, however, applaud the return of the peacoat (with or w/out scarf).

  134. 134.

    p.a.

    @WereBear: it’s probably a carryover from demographics. As a reproductive issue, 20 years is (or was) a workable idea. Probably even culturally if you believe the pace of change is faster in the modern world. But now 10 years seems right.

  135. 135.

    GregB

    The internets have rendered everything hack the moment it occurs.

    It is funny when some turd-muffin like Chris Christie tries to get hipsterish and talk about the Harlem Shake a year or so after that meme was dead and buried.

    Though I sometimes do think that too much time gets spent on pop cultural minutiae while large chunks of the world population seem to be drifting towards open fascism.

  136. 136.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @GregB:

    while large chunks of the world population seem to be drifting towards open fascism.

    A bit hyperbolic?

  138. 138.

    CarolDuhart2

    @WereBear:
    Actually I think seven years is about right. 1945-1952. 1953-1960, and so on. Seven years-the same political influences, the same media and musical influences, Siblings close enough in age to really influence each other.

  140. 140.

    dan

    @Baud: Everyone wearing “ugly” Christmas sweaters. Basically elevating their status by showing how ironic they are, mocking people that might ACTUALLY enjoy wearing a festive holiday themed sweater.

  142. 142.

    Lee

    @Bruuuuce:

    LOL no it’s not. That is what makes that so amazing. That is all done with their voices. They were last seasons winners in The Sing Off.

    Go on to youtube a watch more of their performances.

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