Word: vapid
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...excess that, after a first listen, it’s difficult to discern whether “Youth” proposes homage or parody. Gonzales clearly understands the nostalgia associated with such eagerly retrospective arrangements, but in trying to plug listeners into that same nostalgia, he also recalls the vapidity and gross superficiality that followed in its wake. As a portrait of the West’s last years in the Cold War, then, “Saturdays=Youth” succeeds splendidly, just barely hesitating to spoil moments of glowing artificial beauty with its gluttonous flare for the baroque.But...
...Unlike the NBA and the NFL, with their seamless integration into popular entertainment, their close affinities with the vapid celebrity culture of glossy magazines and MTV, and their nationwide audiences, professional baseball has generally remained a local affair. Teams count their most loyal devotees almost entirely within the regional base, and only seldom are regular-season games broadcast to a wider audience. Americans may, in theory, value mobility: but when it comes to baseball, carpetbagging fans, for good reason, are often shunned and scorned...
...future, to “change” in general, to the unlimited capacity for man’s moral perfection. They read about such fancies in their social theory classes; political “science” teaches how to practice them. Administrators constantly advise their charges, in vapid aphorisms, to challenge authority, to question assumptions, to follow their dreams...
...regarded as a direct reaction to this modern feeling of disappointment. Somewhere along the way, insincerity and sarcasm became de rigueur when dealing with the perceived futility of matching the creative output of past generations.It seems—or at the very least, I hope—that this vapid, reactionary kind of irony is on the wane. Nonetheless, the aesthetic of acerbity is still very much in vogue. The issue for many up-and-coming bands—particularly for “indie” bands—has thus become learning how to sneer without sacrificing creativity.With...
...often overlooked, of this traditional purpose. English majors read Shakespeare and not Rowling for a reason: if final curricular decisions descended to students, we should not be surprised to see radical mayhem ensue. And then even the prestige of the Harvard name might not suffice in concealing the vapid content of college education.Hopefully, the new “Q” stipulations represent merely what they have been advertised as, leveling the playing field for graduate-student teaching fellows—and not a greater trend of student self-rule in education.Christopher B. Lacaria...