On Another Topic Completely

From CT. I just found it hilarious. We all need hilarious right now, right? Go check it out.

Michael Turner 11.04.08 at 3:55 am

“An optional lead-in quote either from the blog entry or one of the comments above, sometimes blockquoted, sometimes double-quoted, sometimes both even though he suspects that the Chicago Manual of Style says something about how that’s redundant or misleading.”

Then he comments on the quote, rather acerbically, trying to balance high and low styles but often as not they tumble to the floor like a some word-juggler’s stumbling attempt to assemble a surrealistic image in the reader’s mind. There’s often some wrap-up sentence fragment that, bathetically, sheepishly, acknowledges the mess for what is, in all-too-obvious hopes that the self-deprecation will carry the day.

Seemingly undeterred, if anything seemingly plucky, but actually increasingly desperate and fearful of being misinterpreted, he either riffs on some other surrealistic imagery inspired by the inanity of the quote, or he adopts something like the tone of the passage quoted, carrying on the parody in that mode. However,in his attempt to reign in the more obvious sarcasm, he produces a paragraph whose humor might go over the heads of some in the audience (“’Audience’?! As if ….”)

Optional final paragraph, either with decidedly more overt humor to make it clear that the above was meant as a joke, or, if he’s tired and can’t reach that low, he reaches higher (even more self-defeatingly), and begins with “Seriously, ….”. He realizes only later, when someone else points it out to Captain Obvious, that there’s no really no point in arguing with the person quoted.

Seriously, he says, partially breaking with form (after all, the above was supposed to be the final paragraph, oh wait, that’s too obvious to comment on): I think everybody has missed something here. This new culture-jamming genre is also spoofing the “bonus content” you get on DVDs these days, where the directors, writers or cinematographers often review the entire film or TV episode, and are sometimes reduced to remarks like “he looks at the camera” just to fill time. The commentary seem to me aimed more at would-be industry participants – director-wannabes, cinematographer wannabes, film bores, etc.—than at professionals in the industry.