Satire Gone Wrong?

To the Editors,

I am perhaps the only 53 year old who reads your L Magazine. I enjoy the music listings, and actually go to check out preferred bands here in Williamsburg. As a divorced father of two, and happy to pay monthly child support for 13 years now, sometimes money becomes an issue. Thus, I can only afford limited music events -— no problem. I wake up each morning because (A) I love my children (B) I "jam" with various musicians, young and old (C) the possibility of a new romance (you never know).

The article I’ve just read by Jimussy Grant (Everybody Loves a Crisis, Vol. III, Issue 8) I’m sure it may amuse your young readers, and understand it’s your job to entertain them. However, what I cannot comprehend is — how you could allow such a barbarous article for impressionable young minds. This type of fuel will only serve to distance our generation gap even further. Is this what we require? Is this a solution? No, it’s not. Should you not try to educate on how ultimately we all become old one day? And by the way, it’s ok to do so. Instead, this article is suggesting shooting me and my baby boomer brothers and sisters as a solution. Allow me to remind you and your generation — you are here because of people like me. No, none of you owe me anything. This is a creative-less style of writing and your approval to print it, is at least, disrespectful and sad.

As far as this mindless writer Jimussy Grant, I think he’s a pussy. And if our eminent general Grant (no relation, I’m sure) was alive — he would of shoved his longest sword up his ass.

Hence, I hope to meet you both in hell.

—Peet Piecoro, Williamsburg

Everyone’s a Critic

Dear L,

I was excited by some of the ideas in your article Meinkampf.com ( Vol. III, Issue 8) as they contrasted the tone set by the cover of the Film Issue (i.e., The Most Overrated Movies Ever!). I think it’s accurate to say that "subjective context" is currently the vangaurd of critical expression, though it needn’t be the goal to which budding critics should aspire. Why bother to publish a personal list of overrated movies after deriding the self-serving "thumbs" of Ebert and company? These lists seem like further examples of personally fabricated cultural elitism that serve more to congratulate the hipster sensiblity than to provide interesting insight or an informative lense for viewing future works of art.

Wouldn’t it be more beneficial for the reading public to get a critic who views his job more as a pragmatic informer than an haute couture instructor? A critic who tells stories that can inform our way of looking at the world rather than subjecting us to his personal (albeit highly sophisticated) whim. Your article exposed a strong and often hidden link between personal ideology and the critic, and leaves one questioning what the real cultural benefits of criticism are. If the White Supremacists highlight the link between ideology and critical expression, than what are we to think of the more nuanced ideologues? The critic whose sensibilities accord with our own is pleasant, but the critic who gives us valuable tools for thinking about our society is a treasure. My humble two cents in a big conversation,

—Seth Aylmer, New York

Dear Mike (Conklin),

First of all I want to say that you are a good writer. I like your style, your perspective, your fervent wish to be a young music fanatic. I feel the same way. (I am referring to your meta-Mountain Goats review (Vol. III, Issue 8)in which you imagined another audience feeling the way you might once have felt — transformed, liberated, understood — while simultaneously making me decide that I had to go get the album.)

But maybe I should get to the point. Adam Ganderson’s Spoon review in the L Magazine was completely lame. I’m writing to you because your email address was there and I think you will actually read this. And I bet you might even like Spoon. (I’m currently listening to ‘Fitted Shirt’, from Girls Can Tell) To begin, a review of Gimme Fiction that doesn’t mention its predecessor, (the genius) Kill the Moonlight, is simply incomplete. And Ganderson’s references to Spoon’s current "wimpier" sound is more than ignorant. Is this guy into hardcore or metal or something? Where on earth is he coming from?

He talks about the "country tinge" that runs through the record. I’ve listened to the album about 50 times and I haven’t really heard that. I think he’s making some big errant leap from "Austin" to "Country." Of course, I am currently listening to a different Spoon album that is much more in the nuevo wavo vain than Gimme Fiction. But... country? Much less than Gimme Fiction.

Why don’t you read the Spoon review and then listen to Kill the Moonlight — or Gimme Fiction, particularly song number seven — and get back to me? I’d be curious to hear what you think.

—All the best, Steffie