Word: ennui
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...think I am, owning a pool? Or worse: Who do the neighbors think I think I am? Thanks to the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies, swimmin' pools will always be synonymous with movie stars--a sign of self-indulgence, of idle-rich ennui. When Liv Ullmann said, "Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool," she wasn't paying the town a compliment...
...about a lawyer who escapes the Twin Towers, wanders uptown in a daze and moves in with his estranged wife. DeLillo's tone is crushingly earnest--has he made a joke since 1985? His characters speak in leaden faux profundities, and they're so sunk in post-traumatic ennui you can barely tell them apart. One day a great novel will rise from the ruins of the Twin Towers, but it's not Falling...
...please, let's not blame the machines, either. French and Italian cafes ditched the handmade espresso years ago for automation and don't seem to have suffered ennui because of it. You think Café Flore in Paris would lose its charm because it served automated café au lait? Je pense que no friggin' way. Sit down in Starbucks and enjoy a cup and some conversation? Sure, if you can manage to snag a seat from the WiFi squatters who have set up an office for the price of a latte. (Here's a suggestion: Set up joint outlets...
...stand up repeatedly dug their stilettos into everyone’s ankles in the smoking room. The Advocate ran out of booze by midnight, due to the surprisingly lax admissions policy, but that didn’t stop the dancing. Our hipster pals over there inform us that ennui is so last year...
...countless other musicians of the '90s is incalculable. Lead singer and former Whitney Museum of Art security guard Stephen Malkmus expressed alienation with the same lo-fi guitar grit of Kurt Cobain, but his lyrics and vocals were models of cryptic passion. Somehow his word salads communicated both the ennui of a suburban smart-ass and an awareness that ennui isn't tragic...