Sorry to be a bore, but ...
There's one of those quickie interview bits in The Guardian today and I'm horrified to see it accompanied by explanatory footnotes. If you read the piece and then the footnotes I think you might understand my indignation.
Anyway, here's the piece:
And here's how I've responded via their comments facility.
"I must be bloody old. Only 50 as it happens, but I'm embarrassed to come across a piece in the Guardian that has fekkin', glossing footnotes.
'The Avengers??!! Yah, like really cool cult stuff. Wicked.'
'Herrman? Kind of like a guy that writes the tune bits between the dialogue. Wow, I actually didn't know some dude wrote that s***!'
And horror of bloody horrors ... Footnote 4 (Chopin, Waltz in A something. Only 2 mins so, like, you can check it out faster than a wazz break). Words cannot express my despair:
'Yah, that's a really sad, quiet bit. Makes you cry, kind of. Y'know when you've got those tear things in your eyes. Monster tune, though.'
I was firmly under the impression that Guardian readers were the kind of folk who even if they didn't recognise a particular reference, they at least had the wit to picture the context in which it was meant.
Or, where a particular point went right over their heads, they'd be curious enough to research it themselves.
Is this really where we are at? Brownie Notes for newspapers? I'm horrified to know that reading newspapers these days is something the young folk should consider a night class in.
"Yes, but you were around when The Avengers was on the telly and you saw those Hitchcock films with the great Hermann scores in the cinema. The kids today didn't have that same exposure."
Possibly not, but then I wasn't around when Nefertiti first envisaged there being a god. Nor, was I there on the night they invented champagne and nor was I there when halfway through, a most tedious movie was relieved by a gentleman being heard to sing and talk on screen for the first time, but still I knows this stuff.
Never under-estimate what people know. Never under-rate their intelligence.
Really!! The Guardian?? Of all papers???
There's one of those quickie interview bits in The Guardian today and I'm horrified to see it accompanied by explanatory footnotes. If you read the piece and then the footnotes I think you might understand my indignation.
Anyway, here's the piece:
And here's how I've responded via their comments facility.
"I must be bloody old. Only 50 as it happens, but I'm embarrassed to come across a piece in the Guardian that has fekkin', glossing footnotes.
'The Avengers??!! Yah, like really cool cult stuff. Wicked.'
'Herrman? Kind of like a guy that writes the tune bits between the dialogue. Wow, I actually didn't know some dude wrote that s***!'
And horror of bloody horrors ... Footnote 4 (Chopin, Waltz in A something. Only 2 mins so, like, you can check it out faster than a wazz break). Words cannot express my despair:
'Yah, that's a really sad, quiet bit. Makes you cry, kind of. Y'know when you've got those tear things in your eyes. Monster tune, though.'
I was firmly under the impression that Guardian readers were the kind of folk who even if they didn't recognise a particular reference, they at least had the wit to picture the context in which it was meant.
Or, where a particular point went right over their heads, they'd be curious enough to research it themselves.
Is this really where we are at? Brownie Notes for newspapers? I'm horrified to know that reading newspapers these days is something the young folk should consider a night class in.
"Yes, but you were around when The Avengers was on the telly and you saw those Hitchcock films with the great Hermann scores in the cinema. The kids today didn't have that same exposure."
Possibly not, but then I wasn't around when Nefertiti first envisaged there being a god. Nor, was I there on the night they invented champagne and nor was I there when halfway through, a most tedious movie was relieved by a gentleman being heard to sing and talk on screen for the first time, but still I knows this stuff.
Never under-estimate what people know. Never under-rate their intelligence.
Really!! The Guardian?? Of all papers???
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