OVERRATED

I’m always going off about what and who is underrated. I thought it might be interesting to do an alphabet list of what I think is overrated.

AGUILERA, CHRISTINA (Don’t get me wrong, I like her, but I don’t get her as any kind of great beauty or sex symbol or extraordinary voice—cute, okay, pretty fair singer, yep, ambitious and good at career moves, definitely, but there’s so many great singers in the world who never even get recorded, let alone awarded, anyway, nothing against her, I love her life story and her personality, just don’t think her talent is extraordinary)

BURROUGHS, WILLIAM S. (Interesting and smart about some things, I like his early, simple, direct writing best—JUNKIE by “William Lee” which I read in the original Ace paperback—and appreciate the inventiveness and sometimes unique language of his later and more famous “cut-up” books, NAKED LUNCH et. al. but he wasn’t the first to use that technique, nor the best at it, and another big but, I’ve tried re-reading some of his most acclaimed stuff and find it not only too tedious now, but also misogynist, misanthropic, and paranoid—yes there’s bad capitalist forces at work etc. but some of his theories are so crackpot and especially ludicrous given the facts of his own life, the man carried loaded guns around and when I knew him lived in an old YMCA windowless locker room he called “the bunker” but was never mugged or even held up as far as I know—as Taylor Mead said to me about Burroughs once, “oh that paranoid Queen”—and he seemed to have a genuine disregard and lack of empathy for most of humanity, which may be understandable since he never had to worry about money like most of the rest of us—try reading him again yourself and see if you can make it through an entire book without becoming bored and/or put off by his nastiness) and a solid tie BUSH, GEORGE W. (and the rest of his family, no matter how low they go in the estimation of the public, they will still be overrated until they are in MINUS terrirtory!)

COLLINS, BILLY (his poetry doesn’t seem to warrant all the accolades and honors he receives, including poet laureate; it’s okay, but so is the poetry of about a thousand other poets)

DOGG, SNOOP (When he first appeared on the scene he seemed kind of interesting, with his stoned, laid-back, almost ironic take on the gangster life, but now he’s like the Donald Trump of rap, a cartoon version of what once seemed almost original)

ENGLAND (In the history of the USA, way overrated especially these days, with all the Jamestown/Queen Elizabeth hoopla, as if the Spanish and French weren’t here generations sooner with their own settlements, and other explorers centuries before, like the Norse or the Irish, and possibly Chinese, how come the kids don’t get more about the presence of the Spanish and French in the early days of this country? but instead the idea that the English somehow “conquered” the land and made it their own—by misreading the managed care the natives had been practicing for centuries etc.)

FARMIGA, VERA (The New York Times Sunday Magazine did a story on her a year or so ago as the new Meryl Streep—see below—who could disappear into roles so thoroughly we couldn’t see the seams in the character etc. and then THE DEPARTED came out and I wondered who the young actress was who was so bad at portraying a confused psychologist (or whatever she was) and it turned out to be “the new Meryl Streep”—more like “the new Steve Guttenberg”)

GUTTENBERG, STEVE (How did that guy end up starring in so many movies, while so many worthwhile and great actors, comic and otherwise, never got that shot)

HUGHES, TED (I have friends who love his poetry, but I never really got why, though interestingly all of them are women and Hughes was maybe best known for being Sylvia Plath’s husband when she committed suicide, as did his next lady friend, hmmmmm)

INTERNET, THE (a great tool! don’t get me wrong, I love it, but when I look something up, inevitably the “facts” I get are at least half wrong, or nonexistent, or swamped by mediocrity, or myth—internet and otherwise—and I miss old fashioned mail, especially post cards, and phone calls with real voices—I know you can get those through the internet too now, but they’re not the same so far—and oh I don’t know, it’s great but…)

JAM, DEF POETRY and JAM, DEF COMEDY (Why must everyone sound alike now? the same stresses on the same beats etc. the same profane language and the same lame targets of the humor or of the poetic poignancy, get over yourselves, or go listen to old tapes of poets and comedic artists from the past, the distant past of early recordings, who all seemed to have their own unique voices, which back then was part of the requirement for getting the kind of attention these folks get that hundreds of more original comics and poets I can think of deserve)

KLEIN, ROBERT (Sorry, I don’t get why he is any funnier than most of my relatives, oh, because he isn’t? At least to me, especially when I’ve seen so many incredible comics over the years in comedy clubs who never got any recognition at all while this guy gets solo shows on cable etc.)

LETTERMAN, DAVID (Never liked his WASPy frat boy humor, and the way it often came out as meanness toward his less aggressive guests, like a kind of upper class bullying style)

MAMET, DAVID (except for Glengary Glen Ross, his plays never seem much better (and often seem worse) than a lot of other unheralded playwrights of his generation, and his movies have been mostly boring, or completely forgettable to me, except for STATE AND MAIN which was at least fun)

NELLY (Okay, first of all, your name’s “Nelly”)

OLIVIER, LAURENCE (I almost never found him impressive as an actor, or believable as the characters he played, he always seemed to be reading lines or declaiming)

POTTER, HARRY (I like watching the movies with my little boy when they come out but trying to read the books, after being told by fellow adults that they’re incredible and original and captivating and totally well written and crafted etc. I just don’t get it, they’re okay kid books and I’m happy they got so many young people reading, but adults? I can suggest a list of about a thousand better books I bet you haven’t read yet)

QUEEN (Okay, two or three tunes of theirs have become anthems, and Freddie Mercury was an interesting character, but the whole legend and mythology of their existence as a band has outrun reality, for me)

RUSHDIE, SALMAN (I support his right to write what he wants, and despise those who would censor, or worse assassinate, him, but in the end I find his novels overly “clever” and boring)

STREEP, MERYL (a fine actress, but not as great as she was labeled back at the height of her career, I dug her in lighter—POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE—or juicier—SOPHIE’S CHOICE—roles, but in the WASPy icon roles and/or heavy drama bits I thought she was sometimes okay and sometimes not even that, as in THE DEERHUNTER where she and DiNiro looked like they were doing an exercise in an acting class to me, I didn’t believe her as an ethnic working-class daughter of a violent alcoholic father for a second, and her death scene in IRONWEED where she came off as a homeless woman as much as I come off as the Pope, anyway that death scene was touted at the time as the greatest ever filmed, but when I saw it I thought it was so run-of-the-mill most acting coaches would have had a student do it again until they got it right—for a great death scene find the one in KING OF NEW YORK when the character actor playing the detective dies in the subway car)

THOMPSON, FRED (as if he might be the savior of the Republican party, the new Ronald Reagan (speaking of overrated) just because he’s an actor, has the gravitas of his height and serious actor presence, coupled with the down homey Tennessee accent to give him a touch of regular people, doesn’t mean he has any solutions, of which he’s offered none that seemed clear enough and promising enough to me to be workable)

USHER (again, doesn’t the name say it all?)

VICTORY (in quotes I guess, as Bush and his followers. and unfortunately too many in the military and among military families, still want to define any outcome in Iraq, but as Gary Shandling said, I think, the other night on one of Bill Maher’s shows, isn’t it time we get over that whole concept of “victory” in war, since it seems to make little sense in the long run, especially since we end up friends with the people we were trying to kill only years or decades previous, i.e. Germans, Japanese, Koreans (most of), Chinese, Vietnamese, et. al., but, they say, this is different, isn’t it always? and who defines “victory” anyway, and like I said isn’t it overfuckingrated? I mean do you remember who was victorious in the last three heavyweight championship fights, or even the Oscars? etc.)

WARHOL, ANDY (I recognize his importance in terms of his impact on art and art history, and of his personality and the cult of it he somehow spawned, but I can think of hundreds of artists whose work I’d rather have hanging on my walls than his—except for his earlier sketches—probably thousands if I think hard)

X-GAMES (I don’t know, if it looks like snowboarding or skiing, I’m thinking it’s snowboarding or skiing, and if it looks like jackass stunts, I’m thinking, what a jackass to risk his life on that, etc. but “X-Games”? come on)

YOUTH (or so they say)

ZOOS (sorry, no matter how “natural” the setting, if it isn’t open, unregulated, vast enough parkland to be a truly natural home to the kind of wild animals we’re trying to save from extinction, then it shouldn’t be, to me, to have animals on display for human entertainment or even enlightenment, seems cruel and unusual, always has)