Red Mosquito

Steve Albini wrote:Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

tragabigzanda wrote:

Anders wrote:Daddy’s Home

First time. Hopefully it’s funny.

the sequel is way better

Anders wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:

Anders wrote:Daddy’s Home

First time. Hopefully it’s funny.

the sequel is way better

One day I will probably watch it.

spike wrote:

Anders wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:

Anders wrote:Daddy’s Home

First time. Hopefully it’s funny.

the sequel is way better

One day I will probably watch it.

Hold on guys, we still gotta figure out this Bourdain/Albini thing.

JuanHamm wrote:

Anders wrote:Love Starship Troopers.

I'm going with Total Recall tonight. This is one of my all time favorite movies.

I've never seen Basic Instinct, so I think I'll throw that one on the list too.

Steve Albini wrote:Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

JuanHamm wrote:

JuanHamm wrote:

Anders wrote:Love Starship Troopers.

I'm going with Total Recall tonight. This is one of my all time favorite movies.

I've never seen Basic Instinct, so I think I'll throw that one on the list too.

Goddamn, Total Recall is so amazing. Is it underrated? How do people feel about it these days?

doug rr wrote:

spike wrote:

Anders wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:

Anders wrote:Daddy’s Home

First time. Hopefully it’s funny.

the sequel is way better

One day I will probably watch it.

Hold on guys, we still gotta figure out this Bourdain/Albini thing.

they're just going to leave us hanging

Anders wrote:Daddy’s Home

First time. Hopefully it’s funny.

tragabigzanda wrote:

Malloy wrote:

Malloy wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:

Malloy wrote:

epilogue wrote:

Malloy wrote:am i wrong to collapse albini and bourdain into the same dude

yes

describe albini and describe bourdain.

i see two highly cynical, highly independent, smart dudes w lots of niche success which they built into commercial success, w fairly self-contradictory political instincts, a penchant for cruelty, to themselves and others, an inability to suffer fools, people who are obsessed w process.

I’ll push back on “Albini had commercial success.” He’s actively rejected it; all his financial success is still very niche, and generally grounded in an anti-capitalist mindset.

no one gets to operate outside of the market. the "anti-capitalist mindset", which is undermined by actions necessary to maintain one's position in the market, in every case makes for thin gruel.

having said that, both of these guys seemed way more interested in maximising creative autonomy, preserving their particular approaches to craft & technique, than they were in maximising profit.

another consonance.

Sorry malloy, still not sold.

When Bourdain got his big break, he used it as a springboard to international TV stardom, establishing lucrative royalty payments and (presumably) made some big investments in capital markets, creating generational wealth for his descendants. Very much a capitalist mindset, even if his brand (which I goddamn love) was focused on tearing down a lot of the capitalist mindset around food.

Albini, on the other hand, famously rejected the conventional 1-2% of royalties on In Utero, instead choosing to take a larger flat-rate fee than usual (I believe $70K, but don't quote me), which he put into the creation of Electrical Audio, for which he is still paying a mortgage. He affords these payments by making himself available at competitive market rates to any musician who calls him through his publicly listed phone number.

Albini has never taken a point on a record, and has gone to great lengths to eschew the title and conventional role of "producer," electing to basically never let his opinion on a piece of music get in the way of what he sees as a basic plumber-like service: setting up microphones and riding faders.

Were Bourdain to do something similar, he would've simply opened a couple restaurants, maybe operated a small farm, and positioned himself as an educator, mentor, and service provider of sorts.

I'd have to really squint to see a world where they are analogous in this regard, even if they both "operated within the market." The market operates as a continuum, and they staked out radically different positions vis-a-vis their compensation and celebrity, IMO.

epilogue wrote:

Malloy wrote:

epilogue wrote:

Malloy wrote:

Malloy wrote:

epilogue wrote:

Malloy wrote:am i wrong to collapse albini and bourdain into the same dude

yes

describe albini and describe bourdain.

i see two highly cynical, highly independent, smart dudes w lots of niche success which they built into commercial success, w fairly self-contradictory political instincts, a penchant for cruelty, to themselves and others, an inability to suffer fools, people who are obsessed w process.

my instinct is that you like bourdain and dislike the kinds of people who dislike albini. but i gotta say, i dont see much distance between any of them.

You think I dislike people who dislike Albini?

that's what I wrote.

as I see it you have three options.

1. make an argument on why they are dissimilar, which could include responding to mine.

2. tell me why I'm mistaken that you in fact like or are agnostic re: self-consciously contrarian types, which I've said bourdain and albini are. my thinking is because you've never really presented in this overwhelming negative way (always affirmation, sincerity and kindness with you), you may not have much patience for it.

3. ignore what I've written, or answer a question with a question

I hope my response didn't come off as flippant or frustrating. I apologize if that's the case. I just though it was curious that you said "someone who likes Bourdain and doesn't like people who like Albini" instead of "someone who likes Bourdain but doesn't like Albini," which is what I expected as I was reading the sentence. Then I had to double check it several times and I still wasn't sure what you meant by that. So I was making sure you wrote what you meant to write and that I read it correctly.

Thank you for clarifying what you meant. Makes total sense (and thank you for the kind words!)

Honestly, I don't have a dog in this fight. Bourdain still does mean a lot to me. The man helped shape my worldview in profound ways (if there is anything affirming or sincere about me, I owe at least part of that to Anthony Bourdain). Painting him as only a contrarian or just an asshole is limiting and I think a tad unfair -- also, "self-consciously contrarian" isn't really how Bourdain came across to me; not saying you're wrong per se, just that a ton of other qualities/descriptors come to mind way before that and I would say he's earned to be remembered for those qualities just as much if not more.

But I also don't know that defending my own personal experiences of him does much good in this discussion. I'm happy to share more, but it's not really qualitative or data driven. It's all anecdotal. I'm sure plenty of people here, for example, lump me in with other RMers whom I can't stand. Perhaps they say that me and ____ are the same guy. And I would, perhaps, find that to be categorically false regardless of any personal experiences of me that the person making the comparison has/had. Both can be true: we are the same guy and we are nothing alike.

I don't know much about Albini. I haven't followed his career with any great enthusiasm or curiosity. I've listened to some of the albums he's produced. I've liked many of them. I 've listened to some Shellac. It wasn't for me. And I think Trag is the only person I "know" who is an Albini stan. And I like trag. So, I can't say that I dislike people who like him. Perhaps agnosticism is the right answer if we're trying to be totally fair. The few tweets or articles/interviews I've read with or about Albini do paint him as insufferable, a self-conscious contrarian, and an asshole. But a lot of people feel that way about Bourdain. Which is why we're here now, right?

Lastly, just to clarify, my initial response ("yes" -- with no further explanation) wasn't meant as a contradiction as much as just a funny little comment. It's probably always unwise to lump two people together into one. Because we're all different (ba-dum-cha!) I wasn't trying to be combinative or evasive. I was aiming for wry or whimsical.

Hope that's somewhat helpful.

Anders wrote:Avengers: Age Of Ultron

Will close out a long eventful day with a rewatch of this. Probably won’t finish the whole thing. Not expecting too much, from memory it’s one of the weaker MCU movies.

Malloy wrote:I started Rover very late last night. what I saw was not great. going to restart and watch tonight.