As a Snob, what is the most inane "thing" you have liked?

Dear Group,

I couldn't fit all my question into the header.
Thus by "thing", I mean "film/TV/song/article/well anything really...".

And by inane I mean "stupid/irritating/frustrating/unexpected/well, as above, really...".

Here in Aussi, Cook/Contestant Shows (on TV) are popular. I never expected to watch one or even like it.
I watched one. The judges were empathetic humans, and I enjoyed it.

Guido.

I've been faithfully watching "So You Think You Can Dance" for years.

I have recently become hooked on "Murder She Wrote" - or "Murder She Caused", as we used to call it - which is being rerun on ITV3. I love how Jessica Fletcher only solves crimes because everyone else is so dim-witted. She also scares the crap out of me.

I believe each Snob must confess to their own sins...

Ian, I am not sure which is more "declasse",

Murder She wrote
or
Midsummer Murders

Guido.

"Murder She Wrote" displays an astonishing contempt for research. They clearly make everything up, so nothing in the show actually resembles what it's like in real-life. From places - their version of London looked like New York, their Ireland was embarrassing, and a recent episodes about a boardroom fight displayed complete ignorance on how corporations operate.

Ex-husband. It's gone now. I replaced it with a red subcompact and 9 ducks.

And a lot of books. A lot.

I've already admitted I'm a Trekkie. Can't get much lower than that.

The Herman's Hermits song "No Milk Today."

A couple episodes of "As the World Turns." Caught it on TV visiting relatives and found it completely engrossing. I think I needed the escapism of "will Katie marry Brad? Will Jack and Carly ever get back together?" About a year later I tuned in again and found the show jumping sharks with great abandon. Maybe that's why it finally went off the air.

Goldfrapp's "Supernature."

Shaun the Sheep. It's a kids show, but Shaun is perfectly adorable and totally zen.

According to reliable sources, Ian Sales likes to read Regency-era romances while wearing a housecoat, his hair in curlers, toenails sporting bright, red nail polish...

It's not a housecoat, it's just a dressing-gown.

"American Idol" for the past few years. These are kids, and I'm in my 50s. How did this happen?

Dire Straits.

Meet Me in St. Louis.

The websites "cute overload" and "I can haz cheezburger. com" are my inane preferences. I love cats in stupid positions with illiterate misspelled captions.

I kicked the American Idol habit a year ago, but I'm still hooked on the lolcats - well, the lol everything. Oh, and I used to love the 'Shopaholic' books, but now I can't stomach them.

16: I picked one of those shopaholic books up when I was in a Walgreens waiting for a prescription to be refilled. They were unreadable. And I have read 16 of the Janet Evanovich books and somehow survived. Oh, yeah, that's another guilty pleasure. Inane does not begin to cover it, but I think they are funny.

#11 I swear I could hear your prissy, Limey intonation, Sales:

"It's a dressing gown, you peasant, NOT a housecoat."

Some days I really could strangle you...

Once a week I watch ten to twenty minutes of "Inside Edition."
Last week they did a special investigative report about how people were getting drunk on cruise ships.

Apparently me liking the Avengers movie, except I like it without guilt or shame or hipster irony. Joss Whedon wrote and directed it. It's really goddamn good.

Can't say the same for my booklust for Warhammer 40K tie-in novels. Then again, it's all a matter of moderation with me. For every nuanced Abel Gance-y epic of cinematic profundity, I still love seeing supersoldiers fight space demons with chainswords.

As far as inane goes, I watched nearly the entire run of Temptation Island I'm not very proud of the fact. Still, in summary ... boobs.

#1> guido47, I had a similar experience on Sunday. Was dead tired, had the TV going in the background while doing stickers with Miss Boo, and stumbled across a Certain Cooking Show and got hooked and Miss Boo and I ended up cheering the cooks on. (Yes, I know, corrupting the future youth of Australia...)

My current TV fascination is "Whisker Wars", great stuff about bitchy American men growing some excellent beards for competition. (It's NOT a sport, IMO.) But I think I'm enjoying that in some sort of hipster way.

I fall off the snob wagon with books fairly regularly. Current inane joy: the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. Oodles of teenage angst and throbbing biological urges. Quite addictive. And definitely being enjoyed without any sort of irony.

As a heterosexual male, I'm probably not the ideal demographic for the TLC show What Not to Wear Then again, the relentless snark and sarcasm is great; the fashion atrocities hilariously awful; and Stacy London seems like the fashionista reincarnation of Sarah Silverman

Same goes for Project Runway Then again, I'd rather watch the cattiness and insane competitiveness over any Presidential debate, since, at least, at the end of a Project Runway episode, there's some decent clothes. The Presidential Debates are two centrist hand-puppets doing slow-motion kickboxing amidst empty catchphrases and political philosophy distilled to its most meaningless and sentimental -- perfect for the rubes and dingbats trundling to the voting booths.

1) Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, with Fat Freddy's Cat

also, Janet Evanovitch and Robert B Parker I can't help it; I have to read 'em all. But I don't respect myself in the morning.

Thanks KSwolff, Will look for Avengers DVD. I too like Joss Whedon and own All 7 seasons of Buffy.
I once watched a complete season (22 episodes) in a single sitting. OK, might of dozed off now and then, but...

Guido is mad, Guido is mad...

No, Guido is not mad. I'll happily sit down to a massive helping of Buffy, even of the spinoff Angel. As long as Spike makes an appearance, I dare say I'd sit through any old shite. As far as Joss Whedon goes, you HAVE to watch Firefly and Serenity. HAVE TO!

And yes, I too have succumbed to THAT cooking show. To the point where I actually cheered when a contestant survived last night's elimination episode by recreating what is quite possibly the ultimate wanker dessert.

As far as inanity goes, I'm putting my hand up for The Bold and the Beautiful. I see it once in a blue moon, but if I know it's on offer, my bum's on the seat. How incestuous can a family get before a kiddie sporting a second head finally makes an appearance?

22: I LOVE Stacy London. And that show.

I also own all 7 seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on DVD. And a few of of the comic books that comprised "Season 8" when the TV run ended.

I third What not to Wear. I've also been watching Say Yes to the Dress with my wife. Not my first choice of shows, but I don't exactly walk out of the room when it's on, lol.

"Snog Marry Avoid?" is almost addictive...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer's sheer popularity means I've avoided it on the presumption that anything that appealing must be lame.

Have watched all six seasons of Highlander though.

26: The Bold and the Beautiful was a huge hit in Egypt back in the day.

...and there's this Black Keys song I can't get out of my head:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsgHsydoo9Q

I listen to American country music... some of the lyrics are atrociously bad, but I just can't help but sing along.

60s relic Richard Brautigan.

.....Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.....

#33 Well, nothin' wrong with Hank I & III (skip II), Merle Haggard, George Jones, Johnny Cash, Steve Earle, Townes van Zandt, a few others. And I still say "Wichita Lineman" is one of the greatest tunes ever.

#34 There's a new Richard Brautigan bio by William Hjortsberg--have you seen it? Looks really good.

33: Country? You mean those guys with full rock bands and cowboy hats? Singing about how much they love their TV and six-pack of beer, glorifying the All-American Loser? That country?

Or do you mean the good stuff, like Cliff says - Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, etc.

On that note, I have listened to and enjoyed country swing band Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies. In fact, the list of inane and ridiculous things self-professed snobs enjoy is remarkably long.

36: I didn't know there were ANY biographies of Brautigan. Will have to check that out. His life story was dismal, but I do like his writing - short, simple and completely unique.

36, 34: I was planning on reading that new bio, but it won't be until next year.

As forgettable as most of Brautigan is, Trout Fishing in America is a good book, and his posthumous An Unfortunate Woman is also worthy. If we judge him by his best work, he remains interesting.

for "lowbrow" music (don't know about "inane" though, unless you take a lot of tongue in cheek type lyrics seriously)... Bluegrass is my favorite. I am partial to classics like Monroe, Scruggs, Jim & Jesse, but I also like "newgrass" like the Seldom Scene etc. (Gee, newgrass is actually pretty old.)

38: There's Downstream of Trout Fishing in America, which I've read, and which does a fairly good job of giving you a warts and all Brautigan.

#38 Hjortsberg is a good person to do the bio, something of a maverick himself.

http://www.amazon.ca/Jubilee-Hitchhiker-Times-Richard-Brautigan/dp/1582437904

Brautigan had one of the saddest endings I can imagine. Alone, all but forgotten. Je-sus.

A bit more on the man:

http://www.mensjournal.com/richard-brautigan-literary-wild-man

I skulk around in the shadows here more than I post. That's mostly because my only real snob status is in relation to my ultra-conservative rural roots. You know... uppity things like reading books, buying ceramic burr coffee grinders, and refusing to watch reality television.

As far as decidedly non-snob activities, I also have a soft spot for Star Trek and terrible old pulp science fiction. Often I buy those books because I like the cover art, but I usually end up reading them too. (I am enough of a snob that I feel the need to point out that I don't read or purchase Star Trek novels.) Then there's my sizable collection of old video games and equipment, mostly Atari.

42: Oh yes, I am absolutely picking that up someday. Thanks for the links.

I've read his In Watermelon Sugar and The Hawkline Monster. Curiosities, but in a good way.

Fred, I'm a snob without portfolio, post secondary education or a sizable brain pan.

It's the ATTITUDE that sets us apart.

Welcome to the club.

#31 My parents got hooked on Santa Barbara when they lived in Dubai. They only gave up on it when one of the characters stowed away in the wheel well of an airliner and then made his way inside and hijacked the plane. That apparently was too unbelievable...

heh heh! I never saw the level of soap opera fandom elsewhere that I saw in the Middle East. I remember eavesdropping on conversations in the Tunisian tram - always discussing these soap operas and their unbelievable plots and characters, like as if they lived next door. In Egypt, these shows were always run in the evening even if they would have been daytime soaps in the States and the whole family would watch them. But then Egypt started getting more and more of their own soaps and also broadcasting similar programs from Latin America, and the US ones sort of disappeared. Maybe they were too expensive.

I have a well-worn copy of Snoop Dogg's DOGGY STYLE in my car--heinous, egregious stuff, but I keep listening to it.

>44 nymith: I'm also a Brautigan fan, in that I think Trout Fishing in America is one of the classic western (small-w, i.e., non-cowboy) novels, along with A River Runs Through It and City of Trembling Leaves.

I still read the comics every morning, including Mary Worth and Mark Trail.

50: When visiting relatives, I always read the comics. Sometimes I have a stab at the crossword too.

49: I plan to read Trout Fishing in America, but I'm waiting for a nice vintage copy to come my way, maybe in a used bookstore (that's where I found The Hawkline Monster, so I hold out hope).

Yes! Jessica is solely responsible for the increased crime rate. Spotted a great re-use of an actress in the same series - a murder victim in one episode and a murderer in another. Quality tv for when you don't want to think.

The really alarming crime rate is found in the small Yorkshire villages of Ashfordley and Aidensfield in the 1960s.

What about St. Mary's Mead in the 20s and 30s?

Anna, I thought most small villages in England had multiple murders each & every year.

The odd thing about Ashfordley & Aidensfield, though, is that according to my calculations, the 1960s lasted 18 years in these two villages, and that during that time, those communities experienced 263.4 percent of all firearms crimes for that decade in the British Isles.

Does Doctor Who count?

Probably this thread.

Well I love Doctor Who, inane or not!

As of 5:30 PM EDT, all of the threads I have been writing in,
exceptr this one have reverted to a menu of 15 months ago
and earlier.

Is anyone else having this problem?

5:39 PM EDT

Cancel the complaint in 60; the current menu
appeared as soon as I left this thread.

I've been known to channel-surf between "Antiques Road Show" and "South Park"...

Forgot my totally inane addiction: Eurovision. Three nights of trashy Euro-pop. Worst bit was that it wasn't until some time Monday afternoon that I finally killed the Jedward ear-worm. (Argh, no, it's back!)

#29> It is hard to tear oneself away from "Snog, Marry, Avoid", but I can't watch much of it without ending up depressed over all these young women who feel the only way to be "beautiful" is to pile on the slap and wear next to nothing. There's something serious wrong with the world.

#43> Fred, welcome! They're repeating "Star Trek: The Next Generation" on Australian TV, and I'm half loving them and half cringing. In my defence, there wasn't much else on in the way of sci-fi when they first screened, so I think it was okay that I never missed an episode back then.

I don't own any Star Trek novels either, although I do have some Doctor Who ones loaned to me by a friend....

Anyone else watch "Cheaters"? Ugh, misanthropy was never so compelling.

Ummm, before I ditched cable TV, I found Billy the Exterminator to be a nice break from Proust.

Thanks for the welcomes. Ya'll are sorta OK for a bunch of snobs.

#63 wookiebender> I recorded all the Next Generations on DVR a couple months back and worked my way through them. I still enjoyed them, but they were easier to appreciate when my wife wasn't watching with me. Now you'd think that watching Star Trek with a real live girl would be living the dream, but instead it just made the cringeworthy bits that much more discomfiting.

Cat videos on YouTube.

As the initiator of this thread, I decree that Cat Videos are NOT now, NOR ever will be, INANE.

This is a final ruling and no correspondence shall be entered into.

So there.
Plugs fingers into ears and sings to self.

Guido.

But dog videos are a step too far!

Unless they're interacting with cats.

Cats are never not funny. My fiancee and I have three of them and they're the ultimate mood lifters.

I'm currently reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books, by the way, so I think that'd be my choice for this topic...

70, I am with you. Who needs cat videos. We just got a cat tower thingy from the Humane Society. They must have sprayed it with cat heroin (not just nip, something much more potent). Two of our three cats have gone completely crazy over it. They roll around on it, fall out of it backwards, reach around the edges to catch their own tails, jump on each other to knock each other out of it, and generally contribute greatly to the hilarity in the room.

Cat video for snobs.

http://jezebel.com/5900906/your-morning-ennui-henri-the-french-cat-articulates-t...

#72 You just made my day, alpin!

#72 That made my week!

Ain't it great how Cats take over Threads :-)

Tim will be very pleased :-)

72: LOL

What about novels where the cats help the protagonist lady solve mysteries and junk? People seem to really like those.

Isn't there also an Elves with Cats anthology?

78: Sounds like erotic fanfiction to me.

I recall reading a novel called Star Ka'at as a kid, in which it turns out that cats are actually telepathic aliens properly known as Ka'ats.

Ah ha, kswolff, #77,

And I have read them, but can't remember author/title.

So you do have a "trash" side to your personality.

I had alway imagined you as an "intellectual".

Great to know "...youse is one of us...."

Guido.

81: I admire John Waters as both a filmmaker and an aesthete. Besides, reading proper good taste stuff all the time just gets boring after a while. I haven't read any Ian McEwan, but I have an inkling that he'll be like listening to the Eagles: English prose as a dry plastic fuck, to paraphrase some old school music critic.

I've read pretty much all of McEwan's books. One or two aren't bad, but the rest are pretty mediocre. He does exactly the same thing in every single one, and it surprises me than no one has remarked on it yet. But then Faulks and Ishiguro pretty much do the same thing in each of their novels. Obviously, that's how to be successful: stick to your formula...

83: I've heard that same criticism leveled at Paul Auster too. But I can just hear someone at the time saying "The new Henry James is out. God, it's another American-in-Europe story!" Edith Wharton, with her characters perpetually trying to escape the gilded shackles of high society. Joyce Carol Oates churning out one fat American Gothic family saga after another.... It doesn't seem like a helpful criticism to me.

No one could accuse David Mitchell of doing the same thing in each of his novels, though.

Obviously, that's how to be successful: stick to your formula...

That would probably explain the proliferation of sequels in adult films.

84: True dat. But there are distinctions within formula, especially if a writer can do some variations with the material. Joyce Carol Oates riffing on American Gothic is different than, say, the industrialized formula of Harlequin Romance or the James Patterson Magical Outline Machine.

Faulkner kept going back to the same material -- the post-Civil War South; several key families; Yok. County -- but went at it from several directions. As I Lay Dying is radically different from, say, Wild Palms or Absalom! Absalom!

William Vollmann loves retreading his favorite topics: hookers, poverty, violence; albeit his approach has been pretty similar. Although he is writing a multi-part metafictional historical epic, The Seven Dreams series, and wrote Rising Up and Rising Down, a philosophical attempt to understand the justifications for violence.

But I think it's high time to approach this with a more nuanced approach, rather than generalized statements intended to yield snark and snobbish smugness.

Righto, Ian, and a decent, generous thing to say, since I know you're not as overwhelmed by Mitchell as some of the rest of us. But, yeah, compare BLACK SWAN GREEN and CLOUD ATLAS. Two very different tomes...

I have to confess, there is a similarity of tone to Auster's work which I find off-putting (and I'm a fan). Also, I've seen a real decline in his last few books, his work seems more self-conscious and, I think, uninteresting. His novel TRAVELS IN THE SCRIPTORIUM was just plain dull. C'mon, Paul, stop being such a pretentious twat and just tell good stories again. And while we're at it, here's another big shout-out to Jonathan Carroll--where the fuck you been, boy? Haven't done shit in years. When are we gonna see something with the power and glory of LAND OF LAUGHS or SLEEPING IN FLAME? Time to grow back some balls, boys...

James Joyce wrote a few books that were radically different: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake

I do enjoy Project Runway, that's pretty inane, although Tim Gunn is a quality aesthete.

Here's Tim Gunn talking about superhero costumes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fQwU7uUPcU

86: Can't argue with that. It's all a matter of variations on a theme to me. A good author might not radically reinvent himself each time he puts pen to paper - and it could be a disaster if he tries, since I've heard accounts that Faulkner's worst was also his most uncharacteristic: A Fable. What authors should be able to do is take a new approach, find a new angle, even on old material.

"A girl wearing a red dress in a forest will be some strange vision of unexpected eroticism but a girl wearing a red dress on a catwalk will be highly predictible." David Bowie.

Hmmm. Does Labyrinth count as inane?

Not a chance--"Labyrinth" is great fun, a family favorite at Casa Burns.

I really love Black Swan Green and Cloud Atlas - his latest, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, was pretty great too. I need to dig up more of his stuff.

89: Labyrinth? Depends. Are you appreciating the puppetry or David Bowie's pants?

Thing is, writers who repeat themselves please critics, because the previous work is a guide to the new. This works on newspaper reviewers, and also academics. Writers who repeat themselves generally therefore end up with high snob value.

93: I see what you did there. Very meta.