Permanent Snide is most unbecoming
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This entry was posted at
16:28 GMT on 12 July 2003
I'm not sure why I didn't post on it at the time, but I watched most of the installments of VH1's I Love The 80s a month or two ago, and it was great fun. Except.
Now I know a lot of people, a lot of people, who hate the 80s. Not me. Sure, there was a lot of bad, but they sure as hell beat the 70s. Go and watch Taxi Driver and tell me if that's a world you want to live in again. Stagflation, lines at the gas station, Nixon and Carter, Karen Black being considered a sex symbol, disco, and leisure suits.
By comparison, the 80s were a period of good taste and self-control.
But back to that "except." Each hour long installment took one year from the 80s and documented trends and fads of that year. Then there was commentary from current "names" on those times. Most of these people seem to have been chosen for their ability to be snide, and having their attitudes stuck permanently in "ironic."
Take Mo Rocca, of Comedy Central's The Daily Show. You can have him. And his pretentious rectangular frames. And his ironicaler-than-thou attitude. What a jackass.
I mean, he could look up sincerity in the dictionary, copy the definition a hundred times, and still not have a clue what it is. And I can just tell that he's one of those twits who likes to lead people on with "don't you think this is interesting?" until he entraps them in a position he meant to get them into, just so that he can mock them. Is he from Ann Arbor? We always have an overflow of those jerks anyhow.
Then there's Michael Ian Black (hey, maybe I can sue him for name infringement!). Again, snide is the watchword here. His segments listed him as an actor in the now-cancelled NBC drama Ed, but what was nagging at my memory was his participation in the MTV sketch comedy show The State, which had four solid episodes and then became complete garbage, and the Comedy Central show Viva Variety, which sucked from day one.
Oh, and he's one of the voices on Comedy Central's annoyance-fest Crank Yankers. Need anything more really be said?
The attitude that these two in particular project is a holier-than-thou condescension, as if you are inferior for even watching the show. The other interviewees, with exceptions, actually seem to be having fun and enjoying the look back, even while poking fun at the various silly and frivilous fads of the time.
Apart from them, the series is great fun. But watching more than one installment at a time induces, in me, a high level of irritation due to the red-line levels of snide.