wino on the loose
i can tell the difference between a shiraz from 1999 and 2000, and no, it's not just about the price.

and so can my brother.
(downhill without brakes . It was the worst day of my life, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 23:33, Reply)

TATE
Anyone seen that 'glass of water/oak tree' crap? How f*cking pretentious have you got to be to be a famous artist and use that as one of your masterpieces.
(kingh0 is grating the cheese of life, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 23:31, Reply)

vixen13andahalf
Oh... shut up
(kevon45uk, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 23:28, Reply)

agree
i agree with discodaz. modern art is just the same artixtic expression humans have always done, just without the "fine art" rules people seem obsessed with. Why shackle creativity with regulations? As long as it affects someone, anyone, even only the person who made it, then it's art.
(visceralvixen, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 23:25, Reply)

art critics.....
why knock modern art? or any art?
if you like something-a sculpture,painting,random pile of cak-then just enjoy it.if you dont like something,or find it offensive,then dont bloody look!

there is nothing more pretentious than people trying to force their opinions and tastes on you.
(discodaz *generic witty comment*, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 22:48, Reply)

Random Function
I went to the opening night at Bristol's Watershed of Random Function, which apparently was a 'laptop jam' where people would play with sound and vision. Tickets were free and it filled time until the film I had paid to see. They even gave you free wine.

Then the lights went down. Some scuzzy interference and white noise appeared on the screen. Ten minutes later, that was still what was going on. The three of us looked at each other, slightly scared, because getting up and leaving would have made whoever did it look very conspicuous.

Eventually I whispered instructions to the other two. A quick whisper of '3... 2... 1...' and we got out and ran for it. Only the other two misunderstood me so I got up and ran out by myself. They followed a minute or so later.

Insufferable. They repeated the night a couple more times I think, but it's no longer going. I hope.
(DamoUK, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 22:31, Reply)

Ahem
www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/raisedawareness/wilding.htm
"This is a drawing of a view through an aperture. The linear shape is a kind of a keyhole through which we can see a cluster of little studs. These are derived from the shape of the little hard green stars on top of an orange, the bit where stalk would have attached. They are arranged into a sort of a constellation pattern. The dome shape of the top of this object also looks a bit like the shape of an orange.

The lines of the drawing also form other shapes. The parts on the right look a bit like a bird’s beak. The lines in the lower part of the drawing look like a bird’s neck. Overall, the aperture shape even looks like a priest’s hat, with a shallow dome and a wide broad brim.

All sorts of visual objects are referred to in this drawing, which purposefully has no narrative."

It's a meaningless bunch of lines and dots that look vaguely like stuff.
(DeletedDeleted, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 22:28, Reply)

I hate this usually,
but I'm pissed, so fuck it.

People who read childrens books on the bus. Cunts, they are.

Oh, Dan Brown isn't pretentious by anyones yardstick You require a semblance of superiority for that, real or imagined. His prose is arsebiscuits and nothing more.
( dingochutney *parp*, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 22:25, Reply)

Modern art
can't stand it, drives me crazy. Nuff said
( Bobson I who milks the milkmen?, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 21:35, Reply)

I once found this website...
... and all it had was a bunch of guys making stupid videos all day. Seriously. And they had this obsession with kittens and badgers as if they were funny or something. Ooh, look, theres a badger. Yeah. Mmm.

Pretentious or what?
(dirty gypsy, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 21:35, Reply)

Rochdale art college ...
... held some crappy open day with crappy students demonstrating their mediocrity for all to see. Best of the lot was some bubble-permed bimbo making warbling noises down a microphone through various echo boxes, tape delays and effects units. Sounded a lot worse than I can possibly describe.

The bimbo's name? Ladies and gentlemen, show your appreciation please ... Ms Lisa Stansfield.

(yes, that Lisa Stansfield)
( Gilgamesh gazed in wonder as Frampton came alive, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 21:22, Reply)

Eraser head, so fucking pretenious
but i couldnt help but like it, it was like if David Firth was able to make films
(Absynth&Cheese Have you tasted my Jesus, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 21:19, Reply)

Dan Brown
Is horribly pretentious, or tries to be. If only he weren't so thick and up himself, eager to show that he knows things, he might succeed in achieving the pretentiousness he so truly desires. Oh, and Russian Ark was pretty good. You don't seem to have noticed the time travelling aspect. The character development is Russia itself. Blah.
(Skittlemcfluff ......................, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 20:34, Reply)

That Alison Lapper
thing in Trafalgar Square. What a pile of fucking shite. "It liberates disabled people....they are finally represented..." Blah blah fucking blah. How can people say that disabled people are under-represented in the public eye? LORD NELSON WAS BLIND IN HIS RIGHT EYE AND ONLY HAD ONE CUNTING ARM. Moaning shits.
( Laughing Boy, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 19:49, Reply)

Russian Ark
A friend of mine who is into all things Russian, invited me round to watch this film 'Russian Ark'. In case you hadn't guessed, it's a Russian film.

Ok I thought, I'm open minded, I like foreign movies, let's give this a shot...

...I was not prepared for the hour and a half of pretentious tedium that followed. The whole film is shot in one take, which is pretentious for a start. From beginning to end, the entire thing consists of some scruffy old geezer walking around a museum and THAT'S IT. Oh, occasionally he discusses the exhibits with other patrons, and he gets thrown out of quite a few rooms - that's about as exciting as it gets. There is no plot, no character development, no beginning, no middle, no end, no ANYTHING. Pure twoddle.

It the worst movie I have ever seen, with the possible exception of Baise Moi.

I kicked my friend in the nuts for making me watch it.

EDIT: Skittlemcfluff - I got the time travel aspect, but the order was so random that I didn't feel any sense of progression. Meh...
(jimi.vicious regrets criticising the American electoral system!, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 19:14, Reply)

Mr P
My Maths and Physics teacher is just about the most pretentious man you could ever hope to meet. He is Polish, or at least of Polish descent, hence he is typically only referred to as Mr P. He is also so far up his own arse that he could massage his own spleen with his tongue.

He looks like the archetypal mad scientist, with long, curly hair, which as a 50 year old, he gels to give exactly the right amount of curl, a goatee beard, a moustache (which he has waxed into a curl on either side in an endeavour to look like an 'elderly D'Artagnan' to annonunce to the world his interest in that most pretentious of all sports, fencing), and a slightly spaced out gaze.

His standard attire, which he wears on a day to day basis, is a crumpled white suit, a bow tie louder than a status quo concert (when he can't decide which of his extensive collection to wear, he ties two together and thus has a mismatched one), an equally vibrant handkerchief in his breast pocket, and, depending on his mood, either a pair of pince-nez or a monocle. He also has a vast collection of unusual hats, which he apparantely buys from the internet and wears as often as he can.

At the weekends, he indulges in his favourite hobby: beekeeping. Need I say more?


I could go on and tell you about the way he mixes his own inks for his pen to get more unique colours, or the way his presence is always preceded by the russian opera he inevitably sings as he waltzes up and down the corridors, or the way he wants to be a composer but refuses to learn any music theory because music comes from 'within the heart', but this post is in danger of becoming upsettingly long, so i won't. I'll end with the fact that despite all this, I am actually rather fond of him, and in fact encourage him indiscriminately to new heights of ridiculousness, on the basis that we could all do with a laugh sometimes.

Oh, and while I've never, thank god, seen his bollocks and therefore cannot judge them for pretension, making assumptions based on the rest of him I wouldn't be surprised if they were embossed with gold filigree and recited the works of T. S. Eliot on demand.
(WarneMarsh My priority for frivolity begets quality jollity, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 18:20, Reply)

The LCD Sound System
"Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah."

Write some fucking words you lazy prententious twats.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 18:02, Reply)

CD silence
Why, oh why, do some artists put a really long silence on the final track in an album, and then have a quick twiddly instrumental bit after it? For example, Bent's album The Everlasting Blink has ten whole cunting minutes of shitfucking silence on the last track. There's just no need, and it means time wasted cutting it off when ripping the tracks, which surely takes me more effort than it would have taken to not put it on in the first place (maybe my view on these things is biased because I had a CD that had such a final track playing, and I left it alone after it had 'finished' because I assumed it really had got to the end and the CD player had switched itself off. Five minutes later up suddenly popped the stupid end bit and gave me a fright).

I've just remembered an even worse one. I listened to a Korn (I refuse to do the capital R; that's pretentiousness in itself) album once and the first 13 tracks were varying lengths of silence. Fucking hell Giles, why? Is it an hilarious goth joke of which I've missed the point?

Aphex fucking Twin! I do like the thumpy graty techno tracks, but he insists on inserting dull little piano-y tracks all over the place. One track on his Drukqs album is some people singing Happy Birthday. Fucking wankerypop!
And one of his singles consists of two tracks and costs £40. Fuck right off!

David Tosseloff - no, your music cunting didn't help the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sod off, pissfelch.

Then I got chilli on my cock.
( Bob Todd whee, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 17:47, Reply)

PI
Oh god. Somebody else mentioned the film "Pi". I had erased it from my brain.

The bit where he's pummeling his own brain in a sink was the bit where I finally realised it wasn't actually going to get better.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 17:30, Reply)

I was at the tate modern last week
I was looking at this display cabinet with a crate of tomato soup in it, I said to the bloke next to me and said "they're taking the piss with this"
I turned around and what was in the next display case?
A urinal wiht the artists name on it, now that's taking the piss

5 floors of utter utter bollocks, I'm really glad we didn't pay in
( VampireMonkeyOnSpeed a super sexy sexual sex terrorist sex, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 17:23, Reply)

I wasn't there, but...
...Aphex Twin once famously performed a gig in New York with a sheet of sand paper and a food mixer, apparently it was pretty good though.
(A Hospital Carpark, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 17:12, Reply)

Minty Hit
It sounded like two guitars and the guy in front of me was 7ft 2 so I couldn't see. They were still shite mind...
(bluebiscuit, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 17:03, Reply)

Philistines
...were more cultured than this lot.

However, I sympathise with the incomprehensibility of modern art. I once made a piece of trash sculpture - carefully / idly melting my emptied white plastic coffee cup with my zippo till it was wholy holey, then nailing it to a wooden plinth. I inscribed "Politics" on the plinth.

It occured to me *after I'd done this* (and that is why I'm NOT an artist) that my protest against art bullshit was in fact potentially a valid art piece. Behold the melted cup! Its intact base anchored to the natural foundation of wood! Ascending the cup, behold the melted corruption that twists the functional form of the cup! "Politics"!!!

If I'd thought of that bfore melting the cup, it would be valid. As long as I had a degree in Fine Art and not chemistry.

Balls.
( no cake for the impuritay Patrick Stewart hasn't aged since, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 17:03, Reply)

Kebab + Art
Went to an art exhibition thingy at college and I was eating a kebab from the kebab shop round the corner. Kebab, tasting like shit, was to be disposed of. Saw a bin full of rubbish so I threw the kebab in the bin making a wonderful "splat" sound as it landed.

5 minutes later and I hear a scream. Some lass is screaming how somebody's ruined her art with a kebab. I never owned up. Still, it won 3rd prize, kebab included.
(wonderbrawl was pronounced dead on, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 16:50, Reply)

...
I once endured six hours of freezing cold rain and bitter gusty winds on Tynemouth beach in the middle of winter watching my flatmate pile mounds of sand into the word "RETURN". So intent on finding perfection was he that he forgot about the light, thus when he had it finished it was pitch black and his flash was so weak you couldnt see it on the photographs, I do believe he got a first, I however got a cold. Expletive.
(Badger McAdams, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 16:31, Reply)

I suspect
that this QOTW was posted due to desperation.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 16:29, Reply)

In case anyone has any suggestions for
Mark McGowan's next project (crawling through sewers naked to protest about rats living conditions?) these seem to be his contact details according to this page -

http://clublet.com/c/c/house?page=MarkMcGowan

07956084780

[email protected]
( Rusty Shackleford www.junt.co.uk / @joeyrobbo, Thu 29 Sep 2005, 16:16, Reply)