Reality, This Idiocy, As Displayed on Chowhound and in the LAT

My enlightened readers will have recognized my super-subtle reference to Clement Rosset, the greatest French philosopher alive (yes, it means you can shove Jacques Ranciere and Alain Badiou, where they belong, that is, not on your bookshelves).
For some reason it seems they translated Idocy by "Joyful Cruelty" in English. Don't ask me why, the joys of reading stuff in translation for non -bilingual "French Theory" fiends. The original title is "Le Réel, Traité De L'idiotie" (The Real [reality]: Treaty On Idiocy).
Rosset is outside of that French Theory circle by the way, which explains his lack of international recognition, as its philosophy stems from both Classical Antiquity and Nietszche. There's almost nothing worthwhile in English on Rosset (screw you, wikipedia!) which means, if you know some philosophy major in search of a dissertation topic, let him/her know (s)he has to look no further. Oh, there's also a French tennis player who shares the same name, so if you google him you may find some strange things. Idiocy in Rosset's world comes form the Greek, and means both something that's unique, peculiar, arbitrary and unknowable.


So I thought today I should rant a bit on a couple of things that are idiotic in the other sense of the word (unbearably stupid) but may also be arbitrary and unknowable. Things that also sometimes make me doubt of my own sense of, you know, my grasp on reality.
If you are Proust readers, you probably know that wonderful moment at the end of La Recherche when The Narrator reads the newly published tome of the Goncourt Brother's Journal, their diary. It's the occasion of a dazzling pastiche of the writers Proust abhorred, but also a great existential moment, when The Narrator wonders aloud whether he hasn't been wrong all along, and if all the losers who were frequenting Madame Verdurin's salon were not, in fact th real geniuses of his time? An in that case, wouldn't The Narrator have more than wasted his time by favoring, say, Vinteuil over Brichot? It's a great reflection on taste and the ramifications of social or class backgrounds and relations on the posterity of art.
It's my favorite moment, a passage I feel all art historians, curators, critics and whoever professes to wok in the cultural field should read and have their students and friends read.

In any case, I stumbled over the last few days on a couple of things that initiated that sparkle of self-doubt in my understanding of my fellow human beings. If you know Chowhound, you know it is to Yelp what Facebook is to MySpace. The slightly better-mannered and more refined cousin in a family of dogs obsessed by food. There's a fair share of snobism on Chowhound (they're always Frenchier or Chinese-ier Than Thou) that becomes fairly risible once the conversations devolve on the "authentic". But this review and its accompanying thread rendered me speechless.

Some bloke with a moniker whose French half means both "stain" and "moron" decided to go to Mozza (we get it from the start, said bloke has money, aren't we happy for him), rendered himself slightly obnoxious in his encounters with the staff, which is OK because they are elitists snobs there. But wait! Bloke is also an elitist snob, and wants to show us he does belong indeed to the world of vapid jerks who deserves to eat at Mozza, where it's not depressing to go eat when the world collapses because, you know, we're in between powerful fucktards:

"It feels like mostly native Angelinos and New Yorkers in here, successful, thriving people, probably a lot of them in the entertainment industry. Young, old and in between, but almost everyone has at least a hint of savviness about them."

So if you're: a) from the Midwest, or b) abroad or c) Greenwich, CT and are nor In The Industry and worse sin ever, don't ever have a "hint of savviness" in you (i.e. you're a clueless idiot if you're from Minnesota and you're in the construction business), whoa! Don't go to Mozza!
Fucktard bloke then proceeds to tell us he's also super-adventurous because he eats headcheese, and he's a super-sophisticated eater because his quail is "retarded", you know, it has stuffing in it. And he's so happy to let us know he paid $108 before tax and tip, whoo hoo! No depression for fucktard bloke who thinks he has a sense of humor!

So reading it I'm thinking, wow, that guy is such an asshole, and so proud to display his irritating and ill-mannered comments for all the world to see. For all the street-savvy, recently laid off people who eat their lengua at taco trucks, to gasp at and understand it's this type of attitude, that braggadocio and insufferable sense of self-righteousness, self-importance that leads to catastrophe.
But what made me really, really doubt of my sense of reality (this Idiocy) was the following trail of comments where everyone and all praised the guy for his indecent review.
Have I missed something? Am I the only one to find this idnecent? Is it really fun and OK to brag about oneself and one's spending when homeless people are set on fire and let to die on the street?


And then, there's the train wreck that the LA Times has become. Over the last year or so, after having been purchased by a Giant Garden Gnome, the paper has become a parody of itself, with real journalists being laid off in droves to be replaced by bloggers. Not that I have anything against bloggers, but at the LAT they all seem not to know how to finish an article or to actually put in some information in their writing. I'm not against real estate porn and chihuahuas either, but I'd love to know more about environment issues or how crime's up in LA.
But the thing that irks me the most about the LAT is this idiot guy Jonah Goldberg who, we understand, is a Republican, OK, everyone has a right not to use his/her brain, but this guy cannot write for the life of him, or express any idea worth reading. The GOP is soft on Obama because he's black? Ha, I think Obama is way too soft on McCain because "Joe Six-Pack" is way past his prime, so that would be ageism, and is too nice on "Hockey Mom -cum- Stooge" Palin, because, hey, that would be sexism (Hillary Clinton will appreciate).

But there's another bigger, more stupid guy at the LAT, Joel Stein, who's urging people not to vote because, you know, voting has been debased by reality TV. I suggest someone sends Joel Stein the US Constitution adapted as a graphic history (see below) and remind him that voting isn't about making wisecracks about "expressing one's opinion", it's a right as well as a duty to establish and frame the orientation of the government. For which you pay taxes (I pay taxes in the US, and as a resident and not a citizen I'm not allowed to vote. If you don't want your right, give if to me, thanks). It's also, for those interested in the "leadership" the United States are supposedly showing to the world ("hey ya, let's nationalize banks the way European did in the 1950s, how come all this deregulation thing didn't work?"), a strong message the US voters are sending the planet about how they intend their relations with other countries to be, in what had become a global economy precisely because of the US leadership.

So, Joel Stein, I'm glad you're going to feel free to complain about the next government because you don't vote, but please do us a favor: shut up, stop writing and take an inoffensive job. Like, help the poor, OK? And be nice, take that condescending Steve Lopez with you as well. The homeless need help.

And so do I.

(yes, I am aware the picture above has nothing to do with the topic. It's a fabric currently on display at LACMA).

What To Read This Summer - FBC! On Art Strike

Dear Adored Readers,

Sorry there were no post last week, I've been frantically trying to write as much as I could before cleaning up my place from floor to ceiling and packing up . Because tomorrow I'm leaving you for about 10 days!
Yours truly is leaving for a magical place where there's no cell phone reception, no TV, no Internet, the only radio station you can catch broadcasts classical music and the weather forecast, and there's no newspaper to be found. On the other hand you can be asked perforce to join a hillbilly and his two retarded sons shop at Walmart, there's a Christian cult nearby whose creed involves restoring Corvairs (I kid you not, they all drive Corvairs), and at the local county fair you can witness elephant lesbian porn. The perfect place to write a novel, I'm telling you. That way, is there's some other gruesome beheading happening somewhere, at least I won't know about it. That was a horrible week, folks, please avoid boarding buses in Canada and vacationing on Greek islands, OK? I feel suddenly safer in gun-crazy America.

Meanwhile I've thought about you, my dear beloved readership, what are you going to do without my fascinating prose to read? Why, you're going to take a break from art! Come to think of it, it's becoming ridiculous how art has become your one and only social life, no?
[That is, I'll allow you one last dash to the SMMOA see the amazing Puppet Show, as it's closing this Saturday, hurry, hurry! Bruce Nauman, Mike Kelley with a rare piece, FBC! fave Michael Smith with Doug Skinner, William Kentridge, Dennis Oppenheim, ...awesome!]
So what else beside art can you do this Summer?
The movies? I'm sure by now you've all seen Dark Knight (I haven't, 2h.30 is way too long for my French self to be locked up in a dark room with a few hundred strangers, I'll wait for the DVD release). Long walks on the beach holding hands? You've spent too much time on match.com, I fear.
With the recession, the only thing you can enjoy is a bit of a staycation with a few good books. But it's summer, so nothing too taxing.

So I've turned to my Distinguished Literary Correspondent (Hi Mike! Thanks again!) and asked his advice about a few summer reads selected only for you, my devoted readers. Isn't life beautiful? My DLC gave me his picks at a very short notice and on the top of his head (and he's gigantically tall, so the top of his head is above the K2, I'm telling ya). I'm sure if I had given him more time he would have sent me a super long list. Because this guy, he has read all the books there are to be read, and then some more.
So Mike sent me 3 choices, and I happen to have read none of them, so it's pretty cool (I'm really intrigued by his last pick, actually). I'm listing them in the order he sent, but I don't think there is a hierarchy. I'm leaving his comments too, as well as mine: I've been unable so far to read a book by someone named Tartt, but if Mike says so, I think I'll try.

So, FBC!'s Distinguished Literary Correspondent Summer Reading Picks:

1. Secret History - Donna Tartt (definitely the best trashy novel of the past quarter century I think)
2. Smiley's People- John Le Carre (really, anything in the Smiley series)
3. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson


And now FBC!'s own summer favorites:

1. Marcel Proust, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (in French, please!). Because, you need *an entire summer* to read the whole thing, no less. And because there's everything in La Recherche: social climbing, desperate love, jealousy, literary and artistic ambitions, socialites, betrayal, obsession, depravity, some really cool parodies (at the very end there's one of the Goncourt Brothers' Journal, to die for), food, war, gay sex (well, the sex scenes and the depravity in La Recherche are pretty lame by today's standards I must say), lost illusions, and the triumph of mediocrity. Pretty trashy too, come to think of it.
2. Jean-Baptiste Botul, Métaphysique du mou. Botul was a French philosopher of oral tradition whose notes have been recently collected in a few small books, most recently Immanuel Kant's Sexual Life. He's also the inventor of wheeled luggage. His life and writings are a little bit of a hoax, and a cross between the OuLiPo tradition and whatever you want to invent about Maurice Blanchot. But whoever writes his stuff, it's hilariously funny, and short.
3. Bartlett's Rotget's Thesaurus. Because I'm reading it this summer, and it's fascinating if you have deep nerdy tendencies. I'm deriving a strong pleasure from the way words are categorized in that thing. I'm sure if you bring this at the beach you'll be able to describe the various hunks and sex bombs in a much more sophisticated way!


With that you're armed for a summer of debauchery, margaritas, sunburn and mosquito bites that should give you ample rest before the November election. Speaking of which, you guys have been awfully bad at finding art VPs for the candidates in our last polls. One last day to vote, come on!

PS: I know, the picture is irrelevant, but I'm lazy, ditto for linking the books. I'm sure you're smart enough to look them up on amazon.com yourself.