Here's what she wrote to me (reproduced entirely without her permission. If she doesn't want her opinion to be heard, than I'll remove it, but until then, it's necessary to put my email into perspective):
I wanted to ask if you guys ever watched that movie Man on Wire. I wonder what you thought?
I have to say I was totally disappointed. It was really hyped up as this amazing documentary, and I found it kind of boring and not that interesting at all. Of course the story in and of itself is really interesting, but I dont think the firlm did a good job.
Anyway, I was just curious becaseu I remember Maria really wanting to see it.
And my response to it:
yeah, we saw it and I totally agree with you. Maria fell asleep about halfway into it, and I was nodding off for about a half hour of it in the middle. I think it won some awards or something, but it didn't really spark my interest. don't know. maybe it appealed more to people who were adults in the 70s and 80s and can remember specific events from back then. and those are the people who make the decisions about the awards and who occupy all the "official" film critic journalist positions.
You know, our lives are going to be eternally influenced by the baby boom generation whether we like it or not. Those fuckers are going to decide what is "good" culturally, artistically, politically, etc. and then when they all want to stop working at the same time, the world is going to go bankrupt. Here's another example for you. I came across a link on the internet when reading about Janis Joplin saying one of her albums was ranked number 100 or something out of Rolling Stones list of the greatest 500 albums of all time based on voting by all music critics in 2003, etc. So I went to that list to check it out and I'd say that about 90% of the albums were from the 60s and 70s. Beatle albums occupied 4 of the top 10 spots. Then all these random bands that you've never heard of. Of the top 50, the only ones that could be considered from our generation are:
17. Nirvana - Nevermind
20. MJ - Thriller
26. U2 - Joshua Tree
46. Bob Marley - Legend
48. Public Enemy - It takes a nation of millions to hold us back.
The more I look at it, the more incredulous it gets. that's 5 out of 50. And in that top 50, there's at least 5 or 10 that no one who wasn't alive in the 60s has even heard about. And of the 5 we could consider from our generation, 4 of the 5 came out before I was 10 years old (only Nevermind is less than 20 years old).
So you could look at this and think, "damn, the 80s, 90s and beginning of the 00s must have sucked musically-wise". But I look at it and think "what? does no one under 55 read Rolling Stone?" Who do they think we are?
It just goes to show, we don't have control over anything. And by the time all those fuckers die, we're going to be too old for anyone to pay any attention to us. the power is going to skip from our parents generation directly to our kids.
oh well, at least we can live in europe!!
