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The Slate "Arts" Index
Hey, there's this wacky online zine called Slate
which, instead of having its own ideas, just goes out
and steals them from other online zines like the Wall
Street Journal, then says how lame they are and
presents its own ostensibly non-lame version of
the exact same so-called "ideas."
That's apparently the genesis of the "Slate
Arts Index" which attempts to set a baseline against
which the relative "health" of "the arts" or "high
culture" or "art" or "art forms" or "civilization" can
be objectively measured.
To establish this 100 point baseline, Slate
arbitrarily assigns a value of 5 or 10 points each to
the current value of a "high culture" indicator like
"number of opera performances," or "number of opera
premieres," or "number of trips to the symphony," or
"jazz sales as a share of the recorded music market,"
or "average attendance at 25 largest ballet companies."
Of course Slate not only ignores what everybody
knows -- that "high culture" is really just whatever
happens when you blow pot smoke at a Petri dish -- but,
by missing this, it also flagrantly misses the following
categories where the status of high culture is much more
accurately revealed than even the number of Fox sitcoms
starring Jane Seymour or Jane Alexander, or whoever:
- 5 points -- number of times, "What's-his-name" or
"or whatever" is used in a New York Times front
page news story about life and death situations
(1997 = 561)
- 5 points -- number of times "or something" is used
as short-hand at the end of a lengthy complex
explanation, to indicate that the explainer doesn't
really know what the fuck he's talking about, so don't
feel bad if you don't either
(1997 = 33,991)
- 10 points -- number of people at Nietzsche seminars
NOT wearing Austin 3:16 tee shirts
(1997 = 3)
- 5 points -- number of mass murders NOT committed per
1000 Twinkies consumed 3 or more at a time
(1997 = 20)
- 10 points -- number of operas where the phrase "if
you know what I mean," is suddenly spoken in English
rather than Italian
(1997 = 790)
- 10 points -- number of chamber music ensembles NOT
named after some genteel euphemism for "blow job on a
freight train"
(1997 = 2)
- 5 points -- number of 3-man luge metaphors used in
Sunday morning political talking head shows
(1997 = 17,659)
- 5 points -- number of times a "Hollywood" film
simulates the frame actually burning up in the projector
for more than 5 minutes
(1997 = 12)
- 10 points -- annual revenue from sale of gray market
goods bearing the seal "for sale in prison only"
(1997 = $57,000,000)
- 5 points -- dollar value of revenue from sale of
instant ads placed on violent highway accidents the
moment they happen and targeted directly at the
rubber-necker psychographic
(1997 = $13,098,000,000)
- 5 points -- number of times the guy in front of you
in the comp ticket line is told, "I'm sorry but I can't
find your name on the list, you'll either have to leave
or go buy a ticket like all the other losers"
(1997 = 185)
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