Video didn’t kill the radio star. That’s bullshit.
How do you explain Rush Limbaugh?
Perhaps internet killed them both? I no longer have (paid) tv, but when I finally weened myself off of it and noticed the fucking sky, there weren’t any videos either. There was just MTV bringing us new depths of shallow.
The thing I’ve noticed as I go along is nothing ever leaves. When I was around 20 I had a conversation about music with my uncle Larry, who is a musician. He was talking about the music he grew up with, i.e., the Beatles, the Stones, etc. I explained to him that I grew up with that music too—plus Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. My son grew up with Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins and the Beatles and the Stones—plus MGMT and Elliott Smith.
Nothing ever dies anymore except people. Everything lives on and on, and in this age of wonderful technology, it’s right at our finger tips. With a little searching and some illegal downloading, you can be listening to Al Jolson in no time, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Squirrel Nut Zippers are much better.
Everything that has ever been on tv is still on tv, somewhere, at 3 o’clock in the morning. There have been, in like the whole history of television, maybe 3 or 4 actually good tv shows. That’s going back 70 some years. Yet here we are convinced that almost all of it is worth watching. Your tv is on right now, don’t even lie.
“Everybody look in the same direction!” —so says tv.
I like tv but I don’t think it’s good. I love Project Runway, for example, and will certainly watch it this coming season, even without Michael Kors. It’s distracting, tv. It helps me to not think and I think that’s the point. It spends the time as I slowly slip, minute by minute, towards death. I am the only thing in the universe that won’t be in reruns. But is this actually good?
“Say cheese!”
