clap clap blog: we have moved


Monday, March 08, 2004
Via a semi-random list post, I am reminded of the excellent Suck piece:

How to Write

And let's not forget Guessing at Science, which is sort of what music criticism is like, except that you take the guesses seriously.

If you aren't familiar with the wonderment that is Suck, you could do a lot worse than read through its archives all day.

Speaking of Filler, how good is I Like to Watch today?

But you know, as a devoted slave to "Paradise Hotel," I may be a little biased. Which brings us to an important distinction: There are critics who prefer to give the illusion that their word is final. They would like you to think that they have some privileged powers of perception, that they alone can separate what is Good from what is Bad.

Then there are people like me. I've got some good ideas, sure, but I also have a lot of personal preferences and prejudices based on a tangled set of psychosocial and cultural influences. Who knows, maybe if I didn't love ham so much, I would have enjoyed "Charlotte's Web" a little more when I was younger. Maybe if my parents got along better when I was a kid, I wouldn't love "Ordinary People" and "The Corrections" and "Six Feet Under" as much as I do.


And then the Stephen King riff, and the whole Sue Hawk line ("a glancing blow from a gay man's limp penis can transform a trash-talking trucker" etc.)--Heather's my hero, man.