The Theft of an Experience

                Think back to some of your favorite movie experiences of all time.  Maybe you had no idea what you were going to watch and were then blown away.  Maybe you had high expectations, went to opening night, and the movie turned out even better than you could have imagined.  After you walked out of the theater or turned off your television you couldn’t stop thinking about how great it was.  You wanted it to never end, and when it did, you wanted to tell everyone about it.  Maybe not everyone has felt this way about a movie, but I’m sure many have.  For others, maybe it’s a book or a season finale that really got them feeling this way.  How much was that experience worth to you?  How upset would you have been if you never had it?  Maybe it’s just a movie, but a truly great movie is a rare thing and you only get so many in your life.  That’s why I just can’t understand why some people are so inconsiderate with movie spoilers.  Some movies are enjoyable even if you know the ending; there will always be the Romeo and Juliets and the Titanics where the ending is no surprise, but the audience is engaged nonetheless.  But most great movies rely on at least some suspense, and some shine in particular because of their twist endings.  If you give away a twist ending to a great movie, you are stealing a great experience from whomever you’ve spoiled it for.  I may be particularly extreme in this sense, but if a movie has a twist ending, I don’t even want to know that there’s a twist; half the excitement is in discovering the existence of a twist at all (as opposed to the content of the twist itself), especially when it blindsides you.  For this reason, I found it nothing short of appalling when I was watching the daytime version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” today during my lunch break and one of the questions was actually: “What movie would this spoil: (sums up entire twist ending to movie)?”  I’m not going to share which movie it spoiled for the reason I just shared above, but it was one of my favorite movies of all time that is especially renowned for its twist ending.  It’s also from the 1990’s, but it’s good enough that it’s still watched today and often on television.  Thankfully, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person that watches “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” at 12:30 pm on a Thursday, but if there had actually been an audience, it could have ruined a truly rare movie experience for a whole lot of people.  Not only that, but the question easily could have been reworked to test for the exact same knowledge without revealing any information that would ruin the film.  The move required a combination of stupidity and inconsiderateness that is unfortunately all to frequent today.  For the record I like to think Regis never would have allowed this shit.

                Incidents such as this one in “Millionaire” are unfortunately not particularly rare occurrences (though it is certainly more egregious than most).  There have been many times when I have read reviews of movies that have contained spoilers.  Sometimes they may not be obvious to the writer, but they still affect the viewing experience.  Many reviewers feel comfortable commenting on a particularly shocking death or turn that takes place in the middle of the movie, perhaps thinking that if it doesn’t give away the ending, it isn’t a spoiler.  Other times it’s not as obvious, but calling a movie who’s plot is about a person’s struggle to survive “sad” or any synonym for the word, is a pretty obvious giveaway that (s)he is going to die in the end; why not say it’s touching, poignant, or emotional instead?  You would think that professionals who do it for a living and who certainly take the art of film seriously would be more attuned to these things.  Especially considering that people read reviews almost exclusively before they see a film, so any spoiler will obviously affect them.  It’s gotten to the point that after seeing a full trailer and reading a review or two I already know what’s going to happen in the majority of the films I watch (it doesn’t help that Hollywood doesn’t put in a whole lot of effort to keep the movies that it pumps out fresh or creative these days).  Maybe I just care more than others, but for me even a very good movie is far less exciting when you know what’s going to happen.  It’s like a car ride: you already know the destination, so you just sit around and wait to arrive.

                I don’t know why spoiling movies (and any other form of media for that matter) is so common and so accepted.  I suspect part of it is because a lot of people really don’t care and don’t realize how much others do.  I also suspect that a large reason is that the damage that is done is never obvious, and thus no one realizes just how much can be lost to a spoiler.  Once a movie is spoiled, you can never get the full experience of watching it, which also means you can never know just how good that experience may have been.  You may never know that a movie that had been ruined for you could have been your favorite movie of all time, so you never see quite how harmful the spoiler was.  Well, you can at least rest easy knowing that my fellow writers and I will do my very best never to spoil anything for you, and if we have spoilers, they will be very clearly marked at both the beginning and end so as to allow you to skip past them.  A true critic should always respect the art to which (s)he dedicates him(her)self.

BV

Note: Sorry about the lack of concrete examples.  I hope it’s obvious why this was necessary.

ESPYs and Emmys

I just want to chime in here quickly about last night’s ESPYs and today’s Emmy nominations.  Regarding the ESPYs, I wasn’t expecting much, and was actually pleasantly surprised by the results.  The problem with the ESPYs is that it’s done by a fan vote, and most fans don’t vote based on statistics or and form of reality, but whatever they like or think is cool.  Case in point, Blake Griffin winning breakout athlete of the year over Arian Foster who led the NFL in rushing yards and TDs or Jose Bautista who easily has the highest OPS in the entire MLB.  Griffin on the other hand was 15^th in Player Efficiency Rating (it’s not a perfect stat, but it is the most comprehensive), while playing for an under .400 team.  On the other hand, he can jump really high, so I guess you have to take that into consideration.  The other winner I disagree with is Rory McIlroy, who won best male golfer and best record-breaking performance, neither of which he deserves.  He’s a great golfer, and will likely be deserving of these awards in the future, but he’s only won 2 PGA events in his life, and has never been ranked better than 4 in the world.  And his record-breaking performance is all relative: he did it in the lowest scoring US Open of all time (Don’t have time to look that up right now, but pretty certain it’s true.  Correct me if I’m wrong); scoring -16 when ten players were -4 or better doesn’t even compare to something like Tiger’s 2000 performance when he was -12 and the next best was +3.  The thing is, the PGA wants a new Tiger so badly, that everyone is caught up in believing McIlroy is already the greatest thing on earth.  I can’t believe I’m actually going to argue for the merits of Women’s basketball in my lifetime, but the Uconn Ladies team really deserved this record due in part to a pretty weak year for records.  My final complaint goes to ESPN, who when nominating male athletes of the year did not nominate a single of the 5 MVP winners across the four major sports.  I understand the playoffs are the most important, but how about giving credit to the players who kept it together for an entire season instead of getting hot for a few weeks?  Nowitzki wasn’t a bad pick for the win though.

Emmy time.  I’m admittedly not a big TV watcher, although I must say I think the medium is hitting a new golden age now that they’ve replaced most of the reality TV with real shows, or at least moved them off to fringe channels.  I don’t know how “The Office” was nominated for best comedy after it’s precipitous decline in quality in the last few seasons (Especially if they didn’t think it was worth a win back when it really was the best comedy on television.  I would’ve liked to have seen “Community” or “Louie” in its spot (or both of them and no “Big Bang Theory”).  Drama nominations seem fine, and I’d love to see “Boardwalk Empire” pick that one up, though they’re all pretty deserving.  Male lead in a drama should be interesting this year as Bryan Cranston is finally letting someone else have a chance due to “Breaking Bad’s” late start (Kind of wish Sean Bean was nominated for “Game of Thrones”).  As for male lead in a comedy, I don’t know why Louie C.K. is up there.  I love Louie C.K. but I think even he’d agree that his show isn’t great because of his acting.  He’s not bad, but he really should have had a show nomination and not an acting nomination.  As for the rest, I really don’t care.  Just some thoughts.  I’ll have a real post on later tonight.

BV

Christian Lopez: Class act [x], Hero [ ], Victim [ ]

                Alright, I’m going to try keep this short (spoiler: I failed), because I talked about baseball last time and I’m going to do sports again tomorrow when I analyze (complain about) the ESPYs, so hopefully I can get some non-sports in later tonight (spoiler: I won't).  Christian Lopez is a class act.  For those of you who don’t recognize the name, he caught Derek Jeter’s 3,000^th hit (which happened to be a home run) ball, and returned the ball to Jeter, although he likely could have sold it for upwards of $200,000.  In return, he received three each of signed balls, bats, and jerseys, and four seasons tickets in the luxury box of Yankee Stadium for the rest of the season, including the playoffs, should they make it that far.  This package is worth approximately $50,000, though it could go higher, depending on the Yankees’ postseason run.  Not bad, but still well short of what he could have made.  It was a classy move to give the ball to Jeter.  Christian Lopez, however, is not a hero.  Nor is he a victim.  Nor is he a charity case.  I understand the Yankees gift to him, and it was totally appropriate.  I even understand Miller High Life offering to pay his taxes on the gifts, which will amount to somewhere between $5,000 and $14,000; it goes perfectly with their advertising strategy and their series of commercials deeming those who are and aren’t deserving of living the High Life.  What I don’t get is the following:

Both [Mitchell Modell, CEO of Modell's Sporting Goods] and Brandon Steiner, CEO of Steiner Sports, guaranteed Lopez at least $25,000 each toward his outstanding student loans of $150,000.

Steiner said he got a call on Wednesday from his buddy Modell, and they got the ball rolling. Steiner set up an auction of memorabilia that eventually will include baseballs signed by both Lopez and Jeter and said Modell is pledging 5 percent from the sale of Yankees-related merchandise at the Modell's chain during what will be called "Christian Lopez Week."[1]

Besides wondering how the fuck a 23-year old ended up with $150,000 in student loans (Did he decide to go to one of the most expensive schools in the country, despite apparently not having any money and being offered no financial aid?), my first reaction to this was sheer disappointment.  I’m sorry if I’m not going to feel bad for a kid who just had a windfall of prizes worth $50,000 tax-free and the worship of a nation fall into his lap, especially considering that apparently the tickets to the game were given to him by his girlfriend (isn’t she the real hero here in the end, or in the beginning, or whatever?)  There are a lot of people a lot worse off than he is right now in this nation (and probably more than half the world’s population outside of this nation), that don’t even have luxury box season tickets to fall back on.  Not only that, but a lot of these people are suffering through little or no fault on their own; I don’t think there’s a lot of starving children, or AIDS babies, or cancer victims out there who we can blame for spending $150,000 they don’t have on a top education that allowed them to become a cellphone salesman.  I understand the companies are mostly doing it for the publicity, but I’d be a lot more willing to buy from a company that comes out and says: “In honor of Christian Lopez, we’re going to make a donation of $25,000 in his name to help wipe out Malaria.”

                The other category that Lopez does not fall into is hero.  Well, that and baseball player, which is why it makes no sense that Topps is planning to make a baseball card featuring Lopez to be available later this year.  First of all, if I opened a pack of baseball cards and found this guy staring me in the face, I’d feel pretty ripped off.  More importantly, he gave a ball that he received through sheer luck to an athlete worth over $100 million dollars, and was rewarded handsomely for it.  How does that make him worthy of a baseball card?  When Tim Forneris got his hands on McGwire’s record breaking 62^nd home run ball, he gave it to McGwire, even though that ball would have sold for millions, and he just got a trip to Florida (to be fair, he worked for the Cardinals at the time, but it appears from my research that he would have had the legal ownership of the ball).  I understand it’s not the same because Jeter is the greatest and classiest and clutchest Yankee/baseball player/athlete/human in the past, present, or future, along with being the second coming of Jesus Christ, whereas McGwire, even before the steroid allegations was, well, not any of those things.  I still don’t see how this qualifies Lopez for the hero status that he has assumed.

                It may not seem like it from the last couple paragraphs, but I honestly do like Lopez.  As I said before, I think he’s a class act.  I almost feel bad for being as hard on him as I am, but it’s pretty obvious that nobody else is going to do it, and my job is to criticize where criticism is necessary.  Lopez earns my praise; I hope it’s clear that the media is the target of my criticism.  I also feel bad for one other thing: not keeping this post very short.  Lots of sports this week, but don’t worry, I have plenty of criticism stored for all aspects of society in weeks to come.

BV

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[1] http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/6765849/companies-line-help-new-york-yankees-fan-christian-lopez

Home Fun Derby!

                As I write this post, tonight’s Home Run Derby is playing on my television in the background.  The Home Run Derby, in my opinion, is one of the best ideas in sports.  It takes the best players and showcases them doing the only thing in baseball that’s actually intrinsically exciting (I actually love baseball, but to me the excitement of baseball mostly comes from the sport’s ability to build drama and pressure better than any other sport, as opposed to innate exhilaration that exists in many other sports simply from watching athletes perform inhuman tasks of athleticism).  Moreover, they’re all having fun, and pretty much everyone is good guy; there’s competition, but it mostly takes the form of rooting for your favorite player to hit more home runs, rather than rooting against everyone else.  It takes place on a night when no other major sports are being played, and it’s a great lead in to the All-Star Game.  Since it started in 1985, it’s become arguably an even bigger event than the All-Star game itself.  An ESPN.com poll from a couple of days ago showed that more voters were interested in the Derby than the All-Star game itself (I can’t find a link to it, but you can take my word for it (or just correct me if I’m remembering incorrectly)).  Although, to be fair, that poll may be flawed, because if I remember correctly it showed that about 5% were most interested in the future stars game, which doesn’t make sense because there’s no way that a full 5% of the poll’s sample were the parents of future stars participants, who I’m pretty sure are the only one’s watching that game.  Anyway, Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby: awesome, exciting, cool, fun.  How could anyone not like it?  Well, I’m glad I asked, because I happen to have an answer.

                Quite honestly, I have found the Home Run Derby in recent years to be painfully boring—worthy of nothing more than being played in the background on mute while I attend to more pressing forms of entertainment.  I feel this way despite the fact that total home runs in the event have seemed to increase as a general trend in recent years.  This, however, is no coincidence; the same change that has led to more home runs has also ironically led to a more boring Home Run Derby: the participants have gotten smarter.  That is to say, they’ve started taking many more pitches.  Taking pitches is, of course, among the most boring things to watch in all of sports (others include pick-off attempts, challenges in football, and the entire NBA regular season and the first 46 minutes of every playoff game).  I understand that the players want to win, and when there’s no penalty for taking your time, waiting for the best pitches is undeniably the best strategy.  But in my defense: this shit is fucking boring!  As of this very second, it is 10:10 pm.  My TV guide says the Home Run Derby ended 10 minutes ago, and yet when I watch the screen, it appears we’re not even half way done with the second of three rounds.  I could crank out home runs faster if I tossed a single wiffle ball to myself in my back yard and had to chase every ball on my own (and my back yard has a lot of bushes: finding that ball is not easy).

                I don’t blame the players for this unfortunate development in America’s beloved Home Run Derby.  The strategy behind the event has led to somewhat of a prisoner’s dilemma: everyone would be better off if everyone took less pitches, but the dominant strategy for any individual is to take as many pitches as necessary.  As I stated before, as long as taking pitches is not penalized, players would be stupid not to wait for that perfect pitch.  The solution, then, is simple: to some extent, they have to penalize taking pitches.  I’m not saying that players shouldn’t be allowed to wait for a good pitch, but at least give them a maximum amount of pitches they’re allowed to takes per round before they start counting as outs.  Either that or start counting pitches in the strike zone as outs.  I don’t know which one the players would prefer, and I don’t really care, but they better do something.  No one wants to watch three hours of their favorite baseball players standing still, doing nothing on a baseball diamond, except, of course, when there’s an actual game.

BV

Side note: To that kid who made a sick catch in the outfield during the Derby: get over yourself.  Cool: making a sick catch on national television in an albeit meaningless context, acting like an adult, and getting the adulation of all your friends who saw it when you see them the next day.  Not cool: making a sick but completely meaningless catch while shagging balls for professionals playing in an only slightly less meaningful event, and then getting up and acting like your play just won your team a state championship.

Music Reviews? No Thanks.

                You won’t see me write about music a whole lot on this site (don’t worry though, I suspect you may get some of that from Baldur), and quite frankly I’ve been exhausted of the subject ever since hearing our good friend Baldur and another friend of ours argue incessantly on the merits of indie music versus popular music, Baldur, of course, taking the indie side.  As you can imagine, Baldur, being a bit of a douchey hipster indie music fan (though, to his credit, he’s improved on this greatly in the last year or so) is a big fan of the website pitchfork, as he will attest to in his article today.  I know it’s nothing new to rag on pitchfork (my favorite example) but I feel it’s worth voicing my opinion on what’s wrong not just with pitchfork, but with the idea of rating music at all, which I find to be utterly pointless.

                First of all, what use do music critics serve at all?  I read book and movie reviews because I don’t want to waste time and money involving myself in something lousy.  Music, on the other hand, is extremely accessible (for free) and intended to be listened to many times over.  Even if you’re opposed to illegally downloading music, you can easily go on youtube and listen to almost any song you would be interested in finding, and then judge for yourself on whether or not it is worth owning.  It’s much easier, cheaper, and faster than say renting a movie to decide whether or not it’s worth buying.  Shit, it’s probably easier to listen to a few songs from an album than to actually read a review of it.  If you want to know if a new album is good or not, listen to it!

                But to acknowledge critics as only serving the purpose of letting people know what media is or is not worth consuming, would be to ignore their much larger role.  As a movie fan, I often like to read reviews of movies I’ve already seen, or movies I know for certain I will see regardless of the review.  I like to see what other intelligent people thought of the movie, and perhaps what I missed or how I saw it differently.  When you have a medium on the mind, reading a critique of it is the next best thing to having a conversation about it.  Shouldn’t music fans have this outlet?  Well, maybe not.

                The key difference in my mind between music and let’s say, books, is that books have a much larger intellectual component to them then music does.  This is not meant to disparage music by any means, but instead to point out that music speaks much more to one’s emotions than books do.  The audience for music is one’s heart, whereas the audience for a book is one’s mind.  In my opinion, this makes music a purer form of art than books, but at the same time, it makes it necessarily more subjective.  The farther a medium gets from art, the easier it is to speak objectively: math problems or proofs are (usually) either right or wrong.  The closer a medium gets to art, however, the more it becomes a matter of taste, and as the Romans said, De Gustibus non est dispuntandum: among tastes there must be no disputing.

                I don’t think I’m the only one to feel this way: there’s a reason that people generally find the Pulitzers and the Oscars a big deal, but the Grammys are generally considered a farce.  This is not to say that music cannot be good or even great, but merely that it cannot be objectively established as such.  What makes some music great music is that a lot of people appreciate it, or maybe a few people appreciate it really really much, or maybe you just appreciate it a lot.  It’s the same thing that makes Coca-cola a great soda or football a great sport.   Which is also the reason that every time I hear the debate about popular versus critically acclaimed music it sounds like this:

Other friend: Apples (the fruit) are popular because they’re the best.

Baldur: People only like apples because they haven’t been exposed to other better fruits, like starfruit.

Other friend: People haven’t been exposed to starfruit because it sucks and no one wants to eat it.

Baldur: That’s just because most people aren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate starfruit.  Everyone who knows anything about fruit likes starfruit better.

Etc.

                To say that there is no aspect of music that can objectively be determined as either good or bad is a big statement.  Big enough, in fact, that I wasn’t even sure if I believed it.  So I looked at a few of Pitchfork’s 10/10 reviews to see if there was anything I could read in their description of the music that made this music objectively good, as opposed to simply enjoyable or poignant to the reviewer.  In their review of Radiohead’s Kid A, after five paragraphs praising the gods who created this greatest of all mankind’s accomplishments (including lines like: “Comparing this to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to blue construction paper.”) they finally begin to describe the album, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is that makes it so great.  Perhaps it’s because “Kid A sounds like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction.”  Wait, what?  Is that what makes music great?  Well how about an individual song: “ ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ opens like Close Encounters spaceships communicating with pipe organs.”  Um, right.  Ok, well here’s what they say about “National Anthem:” “Mean, fuzzy bass shapes the spine as unnerving theremin choirs limn. Brash brass bursts from above like Terry Gilliam's animated foot. The horns swarm as Yorke screams, begs, ‘Turn it off!’ It's the album's shrill peak.”  I don’t mean to criticize the critic: he does an excellent job of expressing what the album has to offer, but just because this connected to him on a very deep level, doesn’t mean it’s the greatest collection of music ever recorded.

                Sadly, music media like Pitchfork has some aspects that take it past being pointless, all the way into slightly harmful territory.  It seems to me that people who frequent music sites or magazines (especially ones that have a clear bias towards certain genres of music) do not go so much to find out what music they will like, but instead to be told what music to like.  As much as we think of ourselves as individuals, it’s very natural for us to like what we know other people we respect like (and in that same vein, hate what is liked by people we have little respect for).  This tendency’s manifestation is especially obvious in the realm of music, in which it’s so hard to explain, even to one’s self, why a song is good or not.  We can see this in the striking popularity in some groups of lo-fi music, which has inexplicably become cool among far too great a fan base (if there is a subjective way to rate music, then lo-fi would by definition be at the bottom).  One’s taste for music is extremely personal and says a lot about a person.  Everyone has different genres and styles that they like, but beyond that, we all have our guilty pleasures, we all have songs that serve the purpose for getting us into a specific mood, and we all have songs that are meaningful to us, not innately, but because of the experiences we associate with them.  Our taste in music is a part of us, and to conform to someone else’s taste (no matter how “non-conformist” that taste is) is to lose a part of ourselves.  Music speaks to us on a deeper level than most other media and most other art; that’s what makes music great, but it’s also what makes it so hard to rate on anything more than a personal level.  For me, this makes the idea of music critiques somewhat futile, and it makes the idea of snobby music critiques especially inane.  If you don’t like a critically-acclaimed piece of music, you certainly aren’t any less intelligent or lesser in any way than someone who enjoys it; it just didn’t connect with you.  It’s not your fault.  It’s not the artist’s fault.  It’s just a matter of taste.

BV

Music Criticism as Intellectualizing an Art Form

Toss out the word ‘pitchfork’ at a party and its unlikely one of your friends will jump to its defense when someone inevitably begins a rant extolling it for excessive douchebaggery, among other things. However, your v-necked friends’ silence on the matter belies the fact that some of them probably read the website…just for the year-end lists, of course.

What is it about pitchfork that galvanizes so much hatred that even its supporters hide behind the Internet's anonymity? Other music sites such as Blender, Spin  and Rolling Stone gain similar readership, yet these magazines are neither referenced nor hated on as much as the indie music magazine. While they are Pitchfork’s contemporary music reviewers, they each also print physical magazines, while P4k (as it is lovingly dubbed by its admirers) remains an “e-zine,” existing only in the hyperrealm. However, even Robert Christgau’s website is more often visited, and the self-proclaimed “Dean of American Rock Critics’” reviews are on average more pretentious and more harsh than even the worst of Pitchfork’s, which is saying something considering the latter once reviewed Jet’s Get Born by posting only a video of a chimpanzee urinating in its own mouth.

Perhaps, in an instance of hating the player in place of the game, Pitchfork has come to epitomize music reviewing in general, and it is at that nebulous idea that disdain is directed. While Rolling Stone reviews music (albeit in a much more accessible fashion,) their magazine also covers movies, politics, electronics, celebrity culture and more, while Pitchfork’s website is primarily music reviews, music news and dense, esoteric musical essays. Thus, people who bookmark pitchfork.com aren’t in it “for the articles,” they are there to read music reviews. Their condescending and inaccessible reviews have attracted contempt towards music criticism in general. Hence the question becomes: “Should Music be Reviewed?” I submit that it should.

Let’s get one thing out of the way; music reviews are inherently pretentious. It takes a pretty inflated sense of self to deem yourself a judge of quality (ignore the fact that that is essentially what I will be doing on this blog.) In addition, when reviewers get mean (pitchfork has given 12 “0.0s” to date), things change. Its one thing to say that because one likes an album, its good. But it is entirely presumptuous to assess the quality of a piece of art as negative, although it does generally result in the most entertaining reviews (see anything given a negative review by Robert Christgau.) I applaud pitchfork for recently deciding not to review music they don’t like, and even removing a number-rating-system from their track reviews entirely.

Music Reviews’ most important function is to signify to the consumer what music is worth listening to. Lets face the facts here; there is a crap load of music out there, and some people get paid to listen to it all day and tell other people what music is good. Why not at least listen to what they have to say? While obsessively reading music reviews may directly lead to an overestimation of the popularity/quality/godliness of a band like, say, Radiohead, to never read critical examinations of music could mean a much more limited access to varied genres. One reason I listen to basically every kind of music (except country, because let’s be honest that’s just unreasonable) is that a bunch of people I’ve never met who seem to know what they are talking about told me a bunch of it was great. We listen to economists about the economy, doctors about our health and political analysts’ about politics before making our own educated decisions, so why not listen to what critics have to say about art when making decisions about art?

Music Criticism provides another important function, and that is to intellectualize the listening of music. I’m sure I just lost a couple friends for that statement alone, but hear me out. If you can ignore the ratings, a review is essentially the literary analysis of the music by someone particularly qualified because of a musical/literary education. In a world where the general population often does not see contemporary music as Art, and the consumption of music-as-an-album has been killed by iTunes, Pitchfork is there to remind us that sometimes, there is more to music than a danceable beat and glittery production. Some people like to go deeper into their music than others, and if they can do it without being insufferable about it, they should be able to live in harmony with people only interested in the next Ke$ha single. As long as you’re not pubescent or already a prick, you should be able to read music reviews without them inflating your ego to the point that you think your music taste is better than others, or that certain artists are more important than others.

In the end, there are many different kinds of music, and it should all only be evaluated on its own terms. I’m in favor of continuing to pay Liberal Arts grads to do said evaluation. When its said and done, the final arbiter of quality is not Ryan Schreiber, or Robert Christgau, or Stephen Thomas Erlewine, and its certainly not the Grammys; that power lies in the hands of the consumer. If you can remember that, and never to drop the word ‘Pitchfork’ in conversation, feel free to indulge in music criticism.

Correction:

An earlier form of this article incorrectly stated that Pitchfork was rated the 94,213th most read site in the US by Alexa.  This rating was actually for pitchforkmedia.com.  The real pitchfork.com is rated 913th as of this moment.

Baldur Mundsson

Greetings, my name is Baldur Mundsson, and I am the greatest arguer you know. I spent my early childhood in the frigid lands of the north, debating with everyone I met on the most trivial of subjects, ranging from correct grammar to the length of the coastline of Great Britain (hint, its infinity.) After reading Atlas Shrugged, I realized my true calling in life was to travel the world, pushing the boundaries of everyday conversation by challenging just about everything anyone says. I embarked on my grand tour of Europe at the tender age of 15, spent a year in Amsterdam (where I found so much debate-worthy misinformation I was forced to set up residence,) before traveling to Japan where I infiltrated a Japanese family. My welcome quickly wore out after a particularly heated argument about the Japanese vs. American Showers (the former being mindboggling for a country that hovers around 98.5% humidity for 3 months out of the year.) I avoided a potential Samurai duel with my host-father and flew to California, where I began a one year cross-country trek. In a brief stint in prison, I met Bort, the first person worthy of my debate skills I have found to date. The rest is history; he suggested the creation of this blog with the intention of spreading truth to the world, while I'm just here to push your buttons.