Thursday, April 28, 2011

Cultural Decay: TONY Edition #1


There is no better yardstick of America’s tragic cultural decay than the weekly horror show that is Time Out New York (TONY).

Written with rancid ironic wit by arrested adolescents self-congratulatory in their cultural aridity, TONY has a loyal readership of hygiene-challenged “hipsters” who live in one of Manhattan’s outer boroughs.  Each week, TONY provides tragic/comic illustrations of our intellectual and cultural decay.  This week’s issue does not disappoint.

Page 42 includes a listing for The Poetry Brothel, which “presents a literary cathouse, where male and female ‘poetry whores’ provide private readings behind closed curtains.”  I imagine it’s only half-price if you want a quick limerick.

Page 88 (in the Classical and Opera listings!) includes a listing for Anti-Social Music, which celebrates 10 years “of punctuating the ‘who cares if you listen’ attitude of some modernist composers with a punk rock middle finger.”  I suppose we should be grateful the tradition of serious music is in such good hands.  Or fingers.

Page 89 of the same section lists the Philadelphia Orchestra, which is too delicious not to quote in whole.  “It’s okay to feel giddy when Charles Dutoit brings his awesome Philly players to town, especially when the program features a pair of mythical Stravinsky sizzlers, Apollo and Oedipus Rex, with dynamo soloists Paul Groves as Oedipus and Petra Lang as his mama, Jocaste.”  This may be Dadaism, but I’m not sure.

More next week!

No comments: