Sean Mills: Archive

Where Todd VanDerWerff is wrong about Contemporary...

AV CLUB COMMUNITY REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY IMPRESSIONISM “Broadly speaking, Abed’s not terribly likely to break into the film industry, the only place he could make any real money at this. At some point, he’ll have to find a job and grow up and stop living in a fantasy world. But, as Troy points out, that would stop making him Abed.” Todd VanDerWerff wants to decode CONTEMPORARY...

Mar 23rd

Play it on the Piano

This is all passed down to me through friends in one way and another. You hear these covers of dance music, heavy metal played on the piano and all of a sudden people can hear how “this is music.” There is a cultural gap between what you used to acknowledge as what is good and what is noise. Then someone plays a piano version (or acoustic guitar) and all of a sudden, a light bulb...

Mar 23rd

Mar 15th

Mar 12th

Nov 16th

Legal plagiarism as technique: using signal noise...

Please read this if you haven’t already: http://neverreadharrypotter.tumblr.com/post/11327241059/analysis-of-the-boy-who-lived-potter-rowlings As I wrote at the end: This work directly quotes in large part A Buddhist’s Analysis of “The Great Gatsby” : While the Still Eyes of the Witness Watch by Tom Armstrong, names were changes and parts were omitted in the interest of parody and...

Oct 11th

Being an Emily Dickinson: reclusive Muppet Baby?

When Dickinson loses her housekeeper, who quit to get married, she writes that she really misses the maid—a common enough statement—but then writes, “To all except anguish, the mind soon adjusts.” This merging of the minor and the vast is a key trait of Dickinson in the poems and in the letters. The leaps of imagination are stunning. One needs privacy and silence, and flourishing genius, to live...

Sep 8th

Cornell West versus Chris Brown

(Excerpts from a worse discussion. Names redacted. Facts retracted.) Strawman Wow. There are multiple servers that are solely devoted to Chris Brown on twitter right now. Millions of people talking about how they support him. They have to pledge support because he beat up his girlfriend Rihanna. Why does he deserve support? Because he is attractive, he can dance and sing. He has 4 million...

Aug 27th

Aug 13th

George Carlin is great.

Carlin is a cool guy. I can’t illuminate or recap his career any better than anyone else, but I think his material is funny and it holds up. I listened to his inappropriate jokes with my approving parents. I missed most of the bite from the sex references and as a kid I remember hating the joke, “beef in a brogan” but other than that I recognized good stuff. I acknowledge his...

Aug 13th