Top Five New Year’s Pop Culture Resolutions

By Nicole V.

The good thing about making a Pop Culture Resolution list for 2008 is that it will help provide me with some structure: obtainable goals within my world of Pop Cult Consumption.

The bad thing? It reminds me of how adamant I am about not making resolutions for my personal life.

Who needs priorities?

1. Quality, not quantity: It is ridiculously easy to read about, listen to, and discard a new musical act in as little as one day. From this point forward, there will never be a shortage of disposable acts uploading tracks to their MySpace page, and certainly no shortage of people willing to name-drop even the most fleeting of artists in the hopes of being on the cutting edge. This is the new underground. No one is worried about keeping favorite new acts a secret, because there could—and probably will—be a new one tomorrow. In this high-speed-modem world of music consumption, sometimes tracks don’t even make it to the downloadable stage. Streaming only and gone in a week. As a vulture for great new music, it is overwhelming to me. I’ve learned my lesson this year and resolve to scale back. Sometimes the best sources are bands or artists you already love: not only their influences, but also their contemporaries. And maybe I’ll wait until I’ve seen a band’s name mentioned more than five times before further action. The bandwagon left me behind long ago anyway; it’s time I found a new method of transportation.
2. Watch more movies! I take movies for granted. Years ago, I took a film survey class, and for a while it completely changed the way I viewed films (and even the way I viewed viewing films). Somewhere along the way, I lost interest. I suspect it was when I started working full-time and evenings adhered instead to a television schedule. Somehow the idea of watching four half-hour programs seemed less time- and mind consuming than a two-hour film. Recently I got sucked into Almost Famous on TV and was annoyed at the commercials. Silly, considering I own the DVD but have probably never actually watched it. A typical day in my life is generally without conflict (or at least resolutions to conflicts) and certainly lacks any exciting, unexpected plot twists. That being said, I take vicarious pleasure in the structure of a beginning/middle/ending in the lives lived out in a movie. Maybe I don’t let myself get involved in films because I feel subconsciously guilty for reveling in the exciting lives of others instead of going and living my own. Or maybe I’m reading too much into this and I just need to challenge my attention span. Nonetheless, there are countless movies out there, awaiting my gentle, still non-critical eye, and in 2008, they will be watched.
3. Visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: In 2003, I hatched plans with three others to make the trek from Toronto to Cleveland. Those plans staggered and sputtered and ultimately died. I think it is time for their miraculous resurrection. Obviously a place any fan of popular music and its culture should visit at some point in their life, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame holds so much promise. Just think of the mixed CD possibilities for the drive there! (Oh, it has to be a road trip. It’s like an unspoken Rock Rule.) Future Inductees! Should-Be-But-Never-Will-Be-Inductees! Not to mention the museum itself! My hopes are high that the Beastie Boys will be inductees by the time I arrive. Whoever might hear this plea: if this trip can happen, I promise that I will not at any time say “Hello Cleveland.” But that doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking it. The entire time.
4. No More Celebrity Gossip “Blogs”: I got a head start on this one, actually. Earlier this year I officially felt nauseated by stalkerazzi blogs and stopped finding them entertaining. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I ever did frequent PerezHilton.com and other sites like it. It’s very easy to say that time spent looking at “candid” pictures of celebutante crotch could be better spent learning about “real issues” in the world, of course, but that task is daunting, and in this context, not even the point. At the end of a day spent refreshing these sites for updates, what has been learned? At this point we’re not even unlearning, or deconstructing; no walls remain to be taken down. Was there ever a chance of that being done thoughtfully? No. The people who run these mega-sites are jealous, cruel creatures. They are the insecure bullies. And in school, I always stuck up for the kids being picked on. That’s not to say I’ve got Britney’s back, because personal accountability is a whole other topic, but I certainly don’t got Perez’s back either.
5. I need a faster Internet connection: Granted, this is pretty much out of my control. My sweet, 72-year-old landlord Maria doesn’t want me to get cable Internet. She hasn’t given me a reason, but I’ve seen the shadily installed cables draped between houses and I don’t think they’re clotheslines. I’m pretty sure the whole block illegally feeds off of her connection. My DSL hook-up can only go as fast as I am close to the head office and, judging by the amount of time it took me to load a four-minute clip from Stop Making Sense on YouTube earlier, I am far. Very, very far. I have definitely felt the burn of a slow connection throughout the past six months. One of my most missed luxuries is the aforementioned YouTube. How am I supposed to progress as a Pop Cult junkie without a high-speed internet connection? Am I supposed to go back to simply reading books and magazines? I’m all for trying to live a simplistic life, but, seriously. Leave my modem out of this. I think it’s time to move again.

NEXT: Less Lee Moore’s list

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