Am I the only one who finds The Onion's AV Club (i.e., the arts & entertainment section) increasingly unbearable?

Years ago when The Onion began in Madison, WI, which is the only place it was available, its reviews were holy to me. If they lauded an album or movie, I'd make a strong attempt to seek it out. But like all sacred cows, eventually they must be killed and eaten. So here I go.

Their reviews and features just strike me as so annoying now. They write with what I think is an unfair and inaccurate "authority" in their voices. By that, I mean a this-is-how-it-is manner. Well, let me tell you, AV Club writers: those are your opinions. Has this been forgotten somewhere along the way? If people are taking as fact many of the pronouncements the AV Club writers sprinkle throughout their reviews, it's too bad. Because instead of using The AV Club's statements as just one variable in judgments on an artist or artwork, they're unwittingly accepting The AV Club's judgment as how it is. I.e., the whole equation. Which is exactly what The AV Club wants you to think. Rather than writing in a descriptive way, they nearly always write in a prescriptive way. I admit that it's debatable which style is truly what A&E journalism should be, but I'm squarely in the camp of the former. The AV Club veers to the latter way too often. This creates a passive reading experience, since the reader doesn't think he/she has to think. Read The AV Club any week. When you're done, think about whether it's been stimulating in the slightest. It's not. Instead, you've just been subjected to a lecture.

I think The AV Club writers probably think they're tempering their overly wonkish-but-opinionated writing with doses of humor, but it doesn't quite work for me. From this week: "Unheard Music: Great Discs You Didn't Hear." Maybe it's just me, but I read this as, "Here is stuff you certainly haven't heard, because you are nowhere near cool as us and don't have as avant garde tastes as us." There's no note of humility to indicate otherwise. Just this arrogant headline.  It may seem I'm overanalyzing a simple headline. So be it.

But probably keeping me most disenchanted with The AV Club is the plain fact that I just don't agree with many of its critical judgments anymore. The Hold Steady put out the best album of 2006? Are you effing kidding me? If that's the case, then I think this is possibly the most lamentable year in music in recent history.

The obvious question, of course, is whether it's The Onion that has changed or me. As is the case when such questions are posed, it's probably both. My tolerance for pretentious, elitist, and (mostly) white-boy journalism has decreased, and they've become more full of themselves. Too bad for both of us. At least the fake news sections are still great.

"Mexican Blue" by Jolie Holland

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You're like a saint's song to me

I'll try to sing it pure and easily

You're like a Mexican blue

So bright and clear and pale in the afternoon

I saw you riding on your bike

In a corduroy jacket in the night

Past the hydrangeas that were blooming in the alley

With a galloping dog by your side

When I was hungry you fed me

I don't mean to suggest that I'm like Jesus Christ

Your light overwhelmed me

When I lay beside you sleepless in the night

And when you dreamed my guardian spirits appeared

And the moon stretched out across your little bed

They said they'd started to get worried about me

They were happy we had finally met

We had finally met

A mysterious bird flies away

Seemed to be calling your name

And bounced off the top of a towering pine

And vanished in the drizzling rain

There's a mockingbird behind my house

Who is a magician of the highest degree

And I swear I heard him rip the world apart

And sew it back again with his fiery melody, melody

When you were mad at me I didn't care

And I just loved you all the same

And I waited for the wind to push the hurricane

Out to sea, and the sun could shine again

Oh I don't mean to give you advice

It's just like Delia said, "oh, Jesus Christ"

Just don't get so high you leave the ground

Everything is so much better when you're around

Just don't float so high you drift away

Stand tall, with your feet on the ground

I love your songs, I love your sound

Everything is so much better when you're around

When the moon is as clear as an opal

And the amethyst river sings a song

I'll remember all the dreams and the mysteries

You have borne in your crystalline soul

That you sing from your golden throat

That you shine from your sparkling eyes

That you feel from the goddess in your thighs

You're like a saint's song to me

I'll try to sing it pure and easily

You're like a Mexican blue

So bright and clear and pale in the afternoon

----------------------------------------------------

Something about these lyrics, Jolie's voice and singing, and the music, all coalesce into one of the most beautiful moments for me. When she gets to "Everything is so much better when you're around," my eyes are wet.

The song's fairly slow and meandering, in some ways, but builds and rises, and then pulls back, in just the exact perfect spots. The six and a half minutes go by like a sad, beautiful dream. For me, this song is gorgeous and perfect music.

To recap: A decade or so ago, I began retaining the tickets from concerts I attended. If I had to estimate, I'd say I have maybe 50-60% of them. Anyway, they eventually grew into a small little pile and earlier this year I finally ordered them chronologically and placed them in a sportscard-type book/album.

Whenever I don't have anything specific or pressing I wanna blog about, I will share a page from this storied book. Here, then, is Page Two:

Green Day
The Mecca Arena
Milwaukee, WI
Tuesday, November 21, 1995

Despite how little relevance this has to anything, I'm going to share a couple Kevin Costner-related stories. Just because I find them funny.

First, from my co-worker Sarah about a friend of hers named Dan:

"He was in an ESL class in the early 90s….here’s my favorite story about it: His class went to see Dances with Wolves in the theater. Afterward, as a writing exercise the teacher instructed them all to write a letter to Kevin Costner thanking him for the wonderful movie. Apparently, one kid in Dan’s class named Gem read his letter aloud and it said, “Dear Mr. Costner, I would like a remote control car. Thank you, Gem.” Dan was enraged the Gem had the nerve to ask Kevin Costner for a remote control car. He went on to hate this kid all through middle school because, to quote him, “Kevin Costner is NOT SANTA CLAUS!!” He still gets really angry when he tells the story. And to top it off, I guess this Gem person started working at Epic soon after Dan did and he still held the grudge and wouldn’t talk to him in the hall."

Excellent! And now, my own story:

On the plane ride from Chicago to London when I did my semester abroad in college, I flew Air France. I don’t know if it was the captain of the plane or a steward (seems like it would have been the latter...strangely, though, something makes me think it was the former), but someone with a thick French accent came over the loud speaker and welcomed us aboard and so on. Then he started listing the movies that would be shown and a little about them. He got through the first couple, and then he said this (written how he pronounced it), “And finally, the Teen Kope with…the Kose-nair.” I just found it so hilarious that the movie needed no description beyond it starring “the Costner.” You know you’ve made it when your name gets a “the” before it. To which Sarah added, "I guess if the French call him 'the Costner,' he just might have Santa Claus status at least somewhere."