[lbo-talk] NASCAR romances

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Sun May 11 23:44:08 PDT 2008


Michael,

I have a running section on my site/blog called "Cultural Atrocities."

I define a "cultural atrocity" as "a cultural artifact that should not exist ... and, yet, does." Like Eddie Van Halen producing a porn flick and then stepping into the film halfway through to blaze out a flaming guitar solo. This film actually exists, but it shouldn't.

Another cultural atrocity: Maybe 50% of the stuff in the SkyMall catalog, which I sent up here: http://www.cultpunk.com/?p=231 -- and that even got me featured on Boing Boing for a bit, nearly crashing the Cultpunk.com site. 90% of commenters to that post thought the entry was funny; 10% cried elitism because I made fun of mail-order meat and truck hitch adornments, like truck nuts, and I was accused of acting like a pompous NYC liberal or something, even though I am an un-degreed southerner.

Another cultural atrocity is Jack Palance's cameo in Jess Franco's movie adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's _Justine_; Palance plays a sexually deranged monk. This shocked me so much I had to buy the DVD.

I'm sure my thinking these all things are funny will offend someone, somewhere. Having held, looked through, read the backs of, etc., the NASCAR SERIES OF ROMANCE NOVELS, and consequently found them chuckle-worthy, only to be assailed here for my classist elitism -- sorry, that is the stupidest fucking thing ever.

And what blows me away is the person who did "call me" on this is "a distinguished professor" at a university with a Ph.D, playing some holier than thou populist game or something. They should be happy because all that did was add to my growing belief that folks with PhDs are pedantic cultural idiots -- surely a populist trope, no? Well, mission accomplished, in that regard.

Dedicated watcher of the Lifetime Move Network,

-B.

Michael Pollak wrote:

"Now don't get me wrong. I can see why they'd strike you as absurd and funny -- or me for that matter: it's because the whole idea of *us* reading them would be absurd. In fact it would be doubly absurd, since we get neither NASCAR nor romance novels. But lots of girls feel the same way about our stuff, like sports or action movies."



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