Word: slackers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This Manhattan-based comedy troupe (currently performing in Los Angeles) enjoys spinning itself as "slacker vaudeville." But let's face it, when people are onstage wearing red balls on their noses, we're at a clown show. The clowns here have existential dilemmas, though: each is uniquely unable to fathom his or her own strangeness. So each tries to stumble through it by mumbling nonsense, head-butting a ham or licking the pate of every bald man in the audience. Physical comedy is rarely this smart, and almost never this funny. Trained actors, the members of New Bozena succeed...
...catch the Gen X spirit too. Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth centers on a pair of drug-addled New York City teens who wrangle over what to do with the $15,000 one of them has stolen from his father. The dialogue and acting--a kind of slacker version of Abbott and Costello--are unrelentingly naturalistic, even as the play betrays a sentimental streak. A grittier take on youth culture is Trainspotting, Harry Gibson's riveting stage adaptation of Irvine Welsh's cult novel about disaffected Scottish youth, which was also the basis for the 1996 film. Staged...
...first album, Mellow Gold, introduced his sound: blending rural rockabilly and urban jangle into a casual aesthetic of sloppy cool. Mixing old school rap styling with twangy roots rock sounds, and fusing it all to an lo-fi punk philosophy, Beck wandered into the limelight as the ultimate slacker geek, announcing his own cheerful uselessness. His clueless sound had a certain novelty appeal, but he seemed less like a suave rock star than like a rock star's whiny younger brother, whose upstart nonsense was original, but couldn't be taken too seriously...
...that less-prestigious alternatives wouldn't satisfy. Rather, the Rubin wannabes won't allow themselves to be satisfied with them. Satisfaction with anything less than what the conventional wisdom deems impressive raises fears of losing standing in the rat race. Contentment with less than the best might imply a slacker's complacency, a willingness to give up on the race. Or worse, it might reveal that you couldn't compete in the race...
This next class is a slacker's dream. There are no sections, six required books-of your choice. (The list is basically identical to the one compiled by the average high school English teacher.) The only assignments are a take-home quiz and a final. History 1407: "European Intellectual History, 1790-1900," even has a great reading list, including Tolstoy, Hugo, and Dickens, and meets Monday, Wednesday and Friday...