That's Enough Entertainment, Thanks

larkin: "if it was any good, you'd have heard it at school."

once again: ian macdonald. that is what happens when you close yourself down to new experiences.

It'd be funny if he'd said 'I asked my friends and they said they'd also decided they weren't going to bother watching all of The Thick Of It'.

http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/

You would have thought, in this week of all weeks, Iannucci could have found something more pressing to write about. Or does the old Day Today spirit only exist when things don't happen in one's backyard?

That doesn't sound like "closing yourself down to new experiences" at all.

FWIW, The article was written quite a while ago though and not this week.

*retreats to safety old ELO/ELP vinyl*

And you'll never know how brilliant and life-changing track five could have been. Or track four, if you had the patience and wisdom to listen to it more than once.

If people can't keep up then they shouldn't be paid for writing articles about being unable to keep up. Give the money to people who can keep up, like me.

You've seen every episode of Dalziel and Pascoe and you've been snowboarding in Peru? Wow.

When you add it up, though, I probably have seen every episode of Dalziel and Pascoe.

Anyway, is "choice fatigue" generational? Maybe it is. When you're young, you accept that there's a vast cultural universe out there, which you're just beginning to chip away at; it's not as if there's a rush. Once you reach your 30s, you can easily start to feel that you've conquered this universe. You know a lot about a lot; you have a socio-historical context for it; and you can see how it all connects. But once you hit your 40s, you are alarmed to find that the universe is still expanding, especially at the youthful end of the scale, where you now feel the least affinity. It's bewildering, unsettling... and it can easily start to feel a little undignified to try and keep up. Hence "choice fatigue".

On the other hand, it could also simply be a function of technological advancement/the multi-channel information age. Whatever. But in many respects, and although I have far from closed down my natural curiosity, I identify.

"the strange feeling of depression that is said to overcome users of an iPod... having all music in their pocket, they find it more difficult to be entirely satisfied with the track they’ve chosen to listen to."

This is almost exactly the opposite of my experience. Having to choose which ten out of x hundred CDs to take with you on holiday: dud. Being able to take your whole collection: total classic.

Although he seems to have forgotten about shuffle. I don't chose to listen to tracks, I let the machine make the choice!

Think about how much time you could've liberated for other stuff by not bothering with any DVD extras ever. By deciding early on - sod this. (Maybe you have).

i mean, armando "useless without chris morris" iannucci - where in fact do all these fucking failed comedians get off telling us to lock ourselves away in our portholes of a spent life?

i nearly fell into this trap, closing myself off to everything and everybody new, and it almost killed me.

so i'm afraid, as a forty-one-and-a-half-year-old "50 quid man" i'm going to continue feeling as enthusiastic about the new charlotte church album as i did about penthouse and pavement quarter of a century ago. i will continue to feel that intangible backbone tingle when i come across something new that i KNOW in my BONES is great ("signs in life" by kano, e.g.). because NOT GIVING UP means NOT DYING.

like all of us, i don't have the time to keep up with everything that's going on. but by, y'know, keeping my eyes and ears open and reading reviews and talking to people and having some faith in my own critical judgements, i find it fairly easy to discern what i'm going to like and what i'm not going to like. and even if it takes me ages getting round to hearing or reading or watching it (i'm currently sitting at work by an enormous pile of books and CDs; i'm considering bringing the car in tomorrow so i can get it home), what's the problem? it's about entertainment; the myriad riches of art. enjoying yourself shouldn't be a chore. if it is, you're fucking up.

[produces little black book, draws dagger by armando iannucci's name]

And I seriously question where Morris would be without Ianucci's input (in the 90s at least).

Mike-t OTM about the generational thing.

Marcello - I think 'giving up keeping up' is not the same as 'giving up' full-stop. I don't have to hear everything new and bigged-up NOW like I used to. I'll hear it eventually, or maybe I won't. Life will still go on.

I think the space and money occupied by Iannucci could better be given to someone younger who actually has some enthusiasm for what is happening now - and I don't mean the atypical 17-year-old hippy into James Taylor and Cat Stevens as tends to be the case when broadsheets recruit "youth."

things enter your life by the paths you take, the people you know, the places you go. this seems more fun and more interesting than wanting everything, or, wanting nothing

it seems the article is really hinting at the desire to know everything, the desire to control, the desire to mark territory, and the fear of letting that go?

you haven't seen the alternate ending to "dodgeball"? you haven't lived. and i'm being serious. i wept tears of pure laughter.

'keeping up' isn't as life-and-death important as you thought;

at 25, you weren't REALLY keeping up.

i can draw my own dots

...agreed, although I'd rather read what he has to say than the majority of other existing columnists.

I do, however, find as time goes by that I have more respect for Iannucci than Morris. That may be more to do with Barley. Has AI had a large hand in everything decent that Morris has done?

Oh, and charltonlido OTM for:

it seems the article is really hinting at the desire to know everything, the desire to control, the desire to mark territory, and the fear of letting that go?

Guilty as charged, I guess...

People are complaining here as if they actually CARE about what's in the Telegraph!

Okay, this is number one with a bullet on my own personal ever-increasing list of new things to watch, listen to, do, and make.

PS the conclusion of the article struck me more as saying change why you do things, rather than what you do. Don't stop consuming, just remember to do it because you enjoy it, not out of any strange sense of obligation.

the commentary for 'dodgeball' is... avant-garde.

It was written last year, as the file name kind of suggests.

Brian Eno has been saying a similar things in his recent interviews - he threw away his telly cos he knew he could happily watch Eastenders or Big Brother or whatever and find it endlessly fascinating and crucial, but he'd prefer to have the free time.

Lots of people have hinted at this though. I'd cite digital TV as an example but the fact that I watch less TV now than I did ten years ago is offset by the obvious changes in my lifestyle between now and then. But there's still something in it, I think. Of course it doesn't mean there is not still quality programming, but certainly quantity has surpassed quality (tho perhaps too is a red herring as far as TV is concerned, when considering how things used to be, when there was less choice).

And I've come away entertained, impressed and not feeling any imperative to ever watch it again (xpost)

But if you WERE entertained and impressed, why would you personally not want to see it again?

I quite enjoyed this film. Do you like Merlot though?

Ah, there's teh rub!

It's not necessarily true, I see loads of guys - my dad and his friend for example - who still obsessively listen to music. My dad, at the age of 30, would play his record all the time - I have pictures of him standing at his turntable (and me next to it in a crib).

Choice fatigue? It only applies if you want to hear/see *everything*. If you're mental enough to really *worry* about this. I mean, for f***'s sake, why should it be a problem to have too much? I'd sad if I didn't have enough (of whatever I craved). I never had a problem with the infinite choice out there, it just made me extremely happy: if I grew tired of something, I knew something else was awaiting me. I just had to be open for it. Now I don't have that drive anymore, but I still listen to music/watch DVDs.

this is what bugs me, rather than the glut in itself. it's the noise surrounding the stuff. possibly it's inevitable, but it does mean media outlets simply follow the marketing schedules of other, bigger media outlets.

In a way though, the music option is worse for me though. I guess the article is aimed at people (like me) who do feel this weight on my shoulders to hear everything and see everything when my resources of time and money are so finite. This article points out (to me at least) that by giving up on this idea, you can just enjoy the things you find and the things that come to you for what they are not for the infinite number of things they are not.

Yes - I still listen obsessively. At 43, I listen to music more than I've ever done, I think. It's just that a smaller and smaller % is up-to-the-minute new stuff.

That said, at 26, I've experienced some of what the author talks about, but I have a few strategies for coping with it, being that I'm generally a fiend for culture:

1) I try to avoid the media that have the lowest ratio of good/suck: this means television and the blogosphere. (that said, if someone I trusted insisted to me that a certain blog was phenomenal or a certain TV program was outstanding, I MIGHT read the blog or rent the DVD)

2) I take my time in getting around to new music. I don't really have a single music critic/publication that I trust enough to take their word, so I usually just hold off until I feel like it, or until enough trusted friends insist to me that I have to hear it.