Well, I’ve watched a few more episodes since, & there is a difference. Now, in addition to ragging on music videos, the boys also comment on clips, sometimes lengthy, from MTV “Reality” series like Jersey Shore & 16 and Pregnant. The thing is: They come across as less imbecilic, more clear-headed & sensibile, than the pathetic douchebags on these shows. Much more, sometimes. Again & again, our heroes seem to be on the verge of saying “These kids today, I tell ya…”
I refuse to insult Mike Judge’s post-modern Tom & Huck with the suggestion that they might be maturing, so I must conclude that real-life society’s sensibility has actually sunk below their mental, emotional & moral level. I suppose there are critics who would suggest that the original Beavis & Butt-Head itself played its part in this de-volution, but I think, now as then, that this is killing the messenger: Check out reality TV, especially the youth-oriented stuff, & Judge seems pretty freaking prescient.
As in 2010, this past year I kept a list of the books I read in the order I read them, not including magazine & newspaper articles, reviews, essays, poems, blogs, short stories, comic books, etc:
Democracy: An American Novel by Henry Brooks Adams
The Giaconda Smile by Aldous Huxley
Discoveries: Early Letters 1938-1975 by Robertson Davies, ed. Judith Skelton Grant
A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie
The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
Murder in Canton by Robert van Gulik
Judge Dee at Work by Robert van Gulik
Djibouti by Elmore Leonard
Scumbo: A Novella and Stories by Barry Graham
The Willow Pattern by Robert van Gulik
Small Town by Lawrence Block
The Champion’s New Clothes by Barry Graham
There is a Serpent in Eden by Robert Bloch
The Red Pavillion by Robert van Gulik
The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer
The Magician of Lublin by Isaac Bashevis Singer
The Origin of Evil by Ellery Queen
And On the Eighth Day by Ellery Queen
The Captain and the Enemy by Graham Greene
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