GUILTY PLEASURES
Internet Message Boards and Musicals
Ours
Internet Message BoardsThere are few things you can read in this world that unequivocally make you denser by the end. Maybe Harry Potter novels. (Just kidding!) Even reading the back of the shampoo bottle in the bathroom conveys at least some modicum of information. But the proliferation of Internet message boards has not only made me officially stupid, it has completely ruined the concept of discourse in America. In theory, stopping by a message board after you've seen a film or watched a sporting contest is supposed to edify your understanding of that event. In reality, what it boils down to are gems like this: "Looks like Belli-CHEAT paid off the refs again, Boston losers!", or "Hillary Clinton and the dumbocrats hate America!" Not exactly Dostoevsky. And yet checking out what other people have to say online is something I do automatically, and will probably continue to do forever until everyone has the Internet implanted in our cyborg face masks. But maybe I am wrong. It's not as though, before the Internet, average people were holding forth eloquently on philosophy, or even speaking in complete sentences. Maybe the only thing my beloved, addictive message boards have done is reveal to us who we really are? And like most people, I really like looking at myself in the mirror. Even when it's not pretty. [Luke O'Neil]
Theirs
MusicalsI have a confession to make. My guilty pleasure in life is musical soundtrack albums, in particular "The Producers" (pictured from left, Richard Dreyfuss, Mel Brooks and Lee Evans) and Monty Python's "Spamalot." I'm also one of the only guys I know that liked the movie version of "Chicago" a few years ago. I know these soundtracks backwards and forwards. To look at the hundreds of CDs in my living room, you'd never know I enjoy a good musical. Most of the music I listen to would make your ears bleed ... speed metal, goth metal, and that ilk. My wife laughs at me when I sing every word of "Keep It Gay" from "The Producers" (Mel Brooks is a genius). She had no idea I knew the CD so well, and she's partly to blame. She has been an avid musical fan from the time she played piano for her high school's productions (she has an encyclopedic knowledge base about musicals) and she took me to "The Producers" and "Spamalot" when they played in Boston. What can I say, I was hooked. [Bryan Davis ,
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