Divide and Conquer

A couple of years ago I did a list of my favourite TV shows to accompany my annual music list. That was a great distraction to write up at my old job, but I don't know that I have the same drive to do that now. Instead, I'll just do a list of what I thought was really good this year:

Watchmen (HBO)
Barry (HBO)
Pen15 (Hulu)
The Mandalorian (Disney+)
Dark (Netflix)
Fleabag (Amazon Prime)
The Righteous Gemstones (HBO)
True Detective (HBO)

A few years ago, I presented at an art history conference at the University of British Columbia. While spending the weekend in Vancouver, I grew to intensely dislike one of the other presenters that was around for the whole weekend. He never stopped name-dropping the people he had read and when when you mentioned anything you had worked on, he immediately asked if you had read this or that article on something tangentially related to make himself seem more well-read than you.

Example:

*Teacher from the school is asking me about my research topic. As I explain how I look at Manet, he speeds across the room and interrupts our conversation.*

"Have you read (the name of some article whose title I've forgotten)? It's the best thing I've read on Manet in years."

"Oh, is it related to his critics (my field of study and what we speaking about)."

"Oh, no."

Like, why are you coming over to do that? Fucking rude and shitty bro.

He also spent a lot of time putting down everyone else's work in snide and petty ways. He talked at length about how dumb he thought T.J. Clark was and how biography was an out of date way to look at artists. He would then not listen when I explain that I'm looking exactly at how biography can be problematic.

I was on cloud nine when, after having given a pretty empty talk delivered with sass to make it seem interesting, a woman from the crowd piped up with "I don't think your topic is as revolutionary as you think it is."

This is all to say that while reading an article for one of my classes this week, I realized that homeboy's talk was basically just this article with a couple of minor tweaks and additions.

Next time you want parade around like you're the biggest head in the room and everyone's beneath you, at least put a footnote at the end of the sentence. Fuckin' kiss my ass.