Thanks, Salon! or, ‘Here Are Some of the Worst Sentences Ever Written’
All of these are from Salon’s routinely shitty Mad Men recapper:
“Not just the hand that fed the agency, but the hand that holds the cigarette we might assume, as SCDP’s former lucky strike turns into a match that could burn down the house.”
“Stan grumps that her opinion shouldn’t count more just because she’s a “boob-carrying consumer” (as opposed to a consuming boob like him). But in fact, bras will soon be even less popular with young women than beans, so I award Peggy the winner’s cup in this round.”
“In this fish tale, the genders are moving up and down like parallel elevators in the Time-Life building, the workplace that consumes so much of their lives they barely can escape it for a meal that doesn’t involve business – and in this episode, not even for that. But this show is about time and life – the time in these characters’ lives, and the times they’re living in. Unfortunately for them, few seem to be having the time of their lives.”
For all those worried that these might go on forever, remember: SUMER IS ICUMEN IN.
It’s the ultimate in condemnatory shorthand for music ostensibly appealing to those who are unserious about challenging their tastes and horizons, music whose appeal is as much based on prospective listeners knuckling under to critical/commercial legacy and processed nostalgia as it is on their discovering art that speaks to them. Pillorying that sort of decision-making and horizon-defining is perfectly fine. But as a term, it’s conceptual bullshit. Dad Rock is as migratory as “hipness” or “alternative,” a definition that, unmoored to any sense of time or a body of current work, makes almost zero sense.