I have finally reached the national championship game of NCAA Football 05?
Is this something I would need a television to understand?
Another question: would Seinfeld be funny if Seinfeld could even halfway approximate a good actor?
What's the deal with those black jeans and the sneakers? I mean, they're so puffy.
Indeed. What's UUPPP with THAAAAAT?
Maybe I just don't get it because I'm anti-semitic.
I don't get the "about nothing" thing either. I think what they mean is that is about little things. Because it seemed to me it's always about manners. As is Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Also, I could make an obnoxious prickish remark about 5, but I won't.
Seinfeld:
(a) Fantastic show. Only bettered by News Radio. Can't believe this could even be an issue. This blog is basically Seinfeld transferred to a new medium.
(b) Some part of the audience's interest in Friends was motivated by an interest in traditional TV themes like will-they-won't-they get together. Not true of Seinfeld. Friends could be earnest (or o-earnest; I still don't understand the distinction), Seinfeld never was.
Is the intellectual cache/obnoxious prickishness [obviated by the admission] I have finally reached the national championship game of NCAA Football 05?
No. The NCAA is as evil a private large-scale monopoly as exists today. Your consumption of its licensed product shows only that you hate black people. Or football. Or, possibly, the North.
My problem with Seinfeld is the Stephen-Colbert-ish way it is portrayed by the media: "Seinfeld - great sitcom or greatest sitcom?" Same with Friends.
Obviously we can't restrict "worst ideas" to single-author ideas, given that the original post was about "ethical monotheism," whatever the hell that is.
Black jeans and white sneakers is a jewish thing?
Seinfeld was hella earnest, in its way.
in the "worst idea ever" sweepstakes, should we restrict entries to those ideas that can be attributed to a single person or small group of people, or should we include ideas that evolved gradually over time, e.g., "the patriarchy" or "ethical monotheism, whatever that is"?
How broadly can we interpret "can be attributed to a single person"? Do culture heroes count?
I will say that I like the notion of Festivus.
Seinfeld was hella earnest, in its way.
Nothing is more convincing than bald assertions, Ben.
Cachet. Doesn't w-lfs-n do spelling?
I think you mean "cachet", Labs (pronounced like "sachet"—actually, holy shit, it really is; I thought I was lying).
Based on an hour of mine this morning, MS Windows may be the worst idea in history.
Was the jeans-and-sneakers (godawful) look a leftover part of a schtick from some era when it was culturally meaningful, like, say, 1993?
The update doesn't acknowledge that there was no accent in the original, so it was wrong by everyone's lights in addition to being just plain wrong.
Note that Seinfeld and Friends are of the same genre as Fawty Towers and Sports Night. Weird.
That just means you don't bother being right.
I was going to say, in 6, "one's intellectual cachet is greatly increased by spelling the word 'cachet' correctly." But I'm glad I didn't, since 6 was a glass house of a comment.
On 12- I like the idea of Chrismukkah.
If Unfogged is like Newsradio, are any of the Matt's Matthew?
"Seinfeld" is a show about meaningless trivialities obsessed over by characters who are funny from a distance but would be unbearably loathsome to know in person. In other words, it's "Unfogged" on television. Of course the bloggers and commenters here aren't going to like it: it's too much like them. In fact, there's this great episode of "Seinfeld" about just this phenomenon.
Less than half of the people at the NYC meetup were unbearably loathesome in person.
25: I said the characters, John, not the actual people. I've no reason to believe that Jason Alexander is a whiny, selfish bastard, but the character he played on TV was. Same with internet personas here. I operate under the assumption that most everybody acts significantly different in person than they do online.
Fewer than half the people.
But with which team did you make it to the big dance?
So when did you figure out that it is spelled without an 'h'?
I like to think that Jason Alexander's real life persona is relatively close to that of Duckman.
"Less than half" has more than ten time the Google hits of fewer. Your time has come and gone, Armsmasher. This is the XXIc.
I did find Ogged to be significantly less unbearably loathesome than his internet persona would suggest. Others were about the same as I expected regarding loathesomeness.
So if my online persona admits to liking Seinfeld, does that suggest that my online persona is not loathsome up close? Or just manipulative and clever, and therefore all the more loathsome?
I think there may be a loathesomeness singularity involved in that case, Tim.
6 and 24 are insightful, I think, except that I would like to know the Unfogged characters in person (and yes, in person I also like to take ordinary discussions and turn them into examinations of bizarre semantic points, if the audience would be semi-receptive). Part of the appeal of Seinfeld is that you're not expected to care about what's at stake for the characters, because nothing is really at stake, and that leaves you free to appreciate the humor knowing that it has no real consequence. The same is true of P.G. Wodehouse, what he described as the "muscial comedy without music," as opposed to "plung[ing] deep into life without giving a damn." Cannot the Seinfeld characters all be described as "mentally negligible"? Of course Wodehouse has an essentially good nature, with happy endings for the acceptable characters, and Seinfeld is all about humiliating them and bringing them down to the status quo, but that's a subject for further study.
Also, anti-Semite Fontana Labs, when speaking of the obnoxiousness of quoting Monty Python and Seinfeld, does not address where quoting The Simpsons falls on the scale. I guess this answers that question.
My favorite episode is the one with the TV Guides and the hoagies (gyros?) you can buy on the subway.
I'm saddened to see the Simpsons brought down to that level.
Of course The Simpsons is one of the greatest works of serial autosequential art of the modern age.
It was gyros, pronounced jie-roes according to Long Island custom.
I've only seen about 15 Seinfelds. I enjoyed all of them, but did get the feeling that I was watching my life gradually slip away.
I have the feeling that Heidegger would not have like Seinfeld, not much being-toward-death in there, but that doesn't mean that I have to like the show does it?
I have the feeling that Heidegger would not have like Seinfeld
This here makes me inordinately happy.
Seinfeld is about as far as you can get from Heidegger. I guess I'm going to have to think in a less binary way so I can define myself as (-Seinfeld) + (-Heidegger). I'm not optimistic about finding a Heidegger / Seinfeld golden mean.
Although not my favorite show, it seems pretty clear to me that Seinfeld was fantastic. I always get sick of the idea of the show, then find myself amazed by how hilarious it is when I'm actually watching an episode. Very few things are funnier than nonchalant cruelty.
Is the intellectual cachet/obnoxious prickishness of saying "Of course, I can't say much about this, because I don't ever watch television" ruined/redeemed by noting that I have finally reached the national championship game of NCAA Football 05?
Yes, but only because this means that when you say "I don't watch television" it won't be followed by "I don't even own a television!"
If you really want to offset the cachet/prickishness, I would suggest that you play something even lower-brow, like Halo (my gamertag is "Club Loser", incidentally).
I've always disliked Seinfeld (yeah, there are funny bits. Not enough.) and wondered if this was a common reaction among native New Yorkers. All the characters are both hideously unpleasant, and recognizably New Yorky types -- I tend to watch five minutes, and think "Yeah, yeah -- fuck you too," and change the channel.
(I don't think I'm talking about anti-Semitism -- I'm about as goyish as anyone gets, and I'm offended by the New York stereotypes. On the other hand, what I think of as New Yorkiness is probably the same thing that makes out-of-towners occasionally assume I'm Jewish, so there may be some minimal connection there.)
But mostly, I just find myself wanting to mutter that even though most of my friends are recognizably kind of like that, that doesn't make us all jerks. Probably a funny show, but I find myself taking it personally.
I tend to watch five minutes, and think "Yeah, yeah -- fuck you too,"
Being not even slightly a New York type (unless you want to count an odd relation to fatoldjewishguywholivesintheprojects, I nonetheless echo the sensation. I think it's because my sense of humour runs to raving insanity, rather than laughing at people humiliating themselves/acting like complete jerks.
ash
['That's why I don't like the Office either.']
24: Toads, which episode was that? I'd like to see it (if I haven't already).
I like comedies better if I have low expectations. "According to Jim" isn't as bad as you think.
For those in the commentariat who haven't seen it, check out the BBC comedy "The Smoking Room." It is viewable in the US on BBCAmerica, and it is wickedly funny.