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Can we make a different/new topic for these so called "guilty pleasures"?

It is really fun (I think!) to hear about peoples interests besides the ballet. I'd start the topic myself, but I think it would be neat if we could move these starting posts over there as well...(does a mod need to do this?)

I'm sure my vulgar interests trump everyone elses. :tiphat:

We'll see about that. :wink:

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Can we make a different/new topic for these so called "guilty pleasures"?

It is really fun (I think!) to hear about peoples interests besides the ballet. I'd start the topic myself, but I think it would be neat if we could move these starting posts over there as well...(does a mod need to do this?)

I'm sure my vulgar interests trump everyone elses. :tiphat:

We'll see about that. :wink:

hah! that sounds like a challenge!!

and since it was my idea to make this a separate topic (it started out as a sidebar on the standing ovations topic) I guess I should go first.

Musically, i'm not sure one can easily outvulgar Iggy Pop (but did you know he appeared on an episode of Deep Space Nine?!)

I used to be a huge industrial music fan (though Rammstein never really floated my boat that much).

My major obsession in life besides ballet is probably sci-fi. While it used to be limited to star trek (see iggy pop ds9 reference above), it now also includes the new battlestar galactica (though i haven't seen season 3 yet--no cable!) and the new dr who. Maybe more dorky than vulgar but...

I believe I've also mentioned on here that I'm a performer--specifically I'm a burlesque performer. While I don't consider what I do vulgar (when I say burlesque I mean burlesque, its not a euphemism) I think that in the context of interests in relation to high art, it probably qualifies :devil:

anyone else?

(can we move the posts that inspired this thread over here as well?)

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References to "guilty pleasure" can be found throughout Ballet Talk, but here are some past topics to start:

Your Secret Ballet Guilty Pleasure

What "bad ballets" do you really love?

Guilty pleasures?

All those topics seem to deal with ballet guilty pleasures.

What inspired my request for this new topic was actualy a sidebar on NON-ballet guilty pleasures that spun off on the Miss Manners and Standing Ovations topics--where people started talking about Iggy Pop and Rammstein and the Ramones.

It may be that this is just too OT for the board, if that's the case then by all means please delete :wink:

I just thought it was fun to get a better sense of what peoples "outside interests" were, so to speak

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Music guilty pleasure: AC/DC, Lionel Ritchie

TV guilty pleasure: SpongeBob Squarepants, Benny Hill

Movie guilty pleasure: Dumb Steve Martin movies (The Jerk, The Man With Two Brains, The Three Amigos)

Personal Grooming guilty pleasure: Big hair :wink:

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Music guilty pleasure: AC/DC, Lionel Ritchie

TV guilty pleasure: SpongeBob Squarepants, Benny Hill

Movie guilty pleasure: Dumb Steve Martin movies (The Jerk, The Man With Two Brains, The Three Amigos)

Personal Grooming guilty pleasure: Big hair :wink:

i'd forgotten all about the Man with Two Brains! I loved that movie when I was younger. I should watch it again :tiphat:

(i love older mel brooks movies personally!)

SpongeBob fills me with fear I have to say ;)

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I already said I didn't have any guilt about any of my pleasure--and I don't--but I see that term does have a specific social meaning, so I'll respect that and see if I can't get some Low Pleasures humming, even if I'm shameless.

Well, I find Paris Hilton a good comedienne--off-screen. She's zany and always floozily and unconsciously comes up with something funny, like throwing the 80 cents at the newsvendor because of the porno movie, screaming 'That's MINE!' and getting a misdemeanour charge for it, that was then dropped. I usually follow the basics if I see a headline, and during the incarceration wanted to know all the minutiea about unfair cellphones and bologna sandwiches. Find her amusing because don't think she's an addict like the other starlet party people--she was born into the milieu so doesn't need sedation from all that dreamtime business.

I don't even really find Iggy Pop vulgar, considering all of it's necessary--just inspiring, sexy and a genius libertine--he just never left the Garden of Eden. Also love his alter ego, David Bowie, but nothing but talent there either except when he says silly things and does dumb art shows like one I recently saw.

I like motorcycle movies from the early 70s like 'Run Angel Run', 'Chrome & Hot Leather', and 'Angels Die Hard'. Also like some Russ Meyer movies, esp. 'Vixen' and 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.'

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The concept of "guilty pleasures" is somewhat relative. There are people to whom I would never volunteer the information that I frequently reread "Calvin and Hobbes," an a compulsive singer-along-with-Sondheim, and know by heart just about every line of "Are You Being Served?"

On the other hand -- believe it or not :tiphat: -- there a people to whom I avoid mentioning that I'm in love with ballet and that I put on tights and little canvas shoes once or twice a week and actually do a bit of it myself.

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The concept of "guilty pleasures" is somewhat relative.

You can say that again. :tiphat: I'm the one who introduced the term here, but I don't really like it unless it's understood to be tongue in cheek. Moral issues where they arise aside, as far as I'm concerned the only thing wrong with aesthetic "vulgarity" is that some people don't recognize it for what it is, so that mere entertainment drives out art, the merely pleasurable drives out the work that is spiritually sustaining. But does the connoisseur of haute cuisine . . . imperfect analogy on the way . . . not appreciate a grilled hot dog? That's his loss.

Apologies for the misconceived and therefore potentially misleading category.

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so that mere entertainment drives out art, the merely pleasurable drives out the work that is spiritually sustaining.

It's always driven out art, but art has also always been able to hold its own. I know what you mean, but I think I see it as a normal process--after all, we need not pretend the class system is not still alive and well. Now, we even have another NYTimes bone to pick since yesterday--tee hee, of course, not really, you were linking to an article about religiosity, I'm referring to the A.O. Scott article. I just looked at that Bergman/Antonioni article, and begin to think that it's some of the journalistic standards I find vulgar--as in 'Before Them, Films Were Just Movies', which is such hype and silly nonsense (in fact, it is vulgar in the extreme) I was unable to bring myself to read any further, as much as I am glad that I have spent a lot more time on both directors than I have on Paris Hilton.

But does the connoisseur of haute cuisine . . . imperfect analogy on the way . . . not appreciate a grilled hot dog? That's his loss.

I don't think that's at all imperfect. A perfectly grilled hot dog is anything but vulgar, and couldn't qualify as a guilty pleasure. On the other hand, a Whopper, Jr. could, as could Snickers and Milky Ways. When I wrote earlier, I couldn't find in the food arena anything truly low I like, although I used to.

Apologies for the misconceived and therefore potentially misleading category.

But you shouldn't. We need to struggle with these issues if we are to build a better world.

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Apologies for the misconceived and therefore potentially misleading category.

But you shouldn't. We need to struggle with these issues if we are to build a better world.

Amen to that.

But what I really want is to hear a few more "guilty secrets".

What DO Ballet Talkers get up to when they aren't admiring Giselle wafting through a series of assembles?

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Patrick, two relics of the class system that I never personally experienced but in imagination hold dear are in depth classical education and noblesse obligle. What determines Good taste with a capital G, the taste worth passing on as more than personal, accident-of-birth/history preference? Character perhaps most of all determines what one holds valuable; but previous to that, education obviously serves to contextualize one's surrounding culture.

We need to struggle with these issues if we are to build a better world.

Words that warm my heart.

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The concept of "guilty pleasures" is somewhat relative.

You can say that again. :tiphat: I'm the one who introduced the term here, but I don't really like it unless it's understood to be tongue in cheek. Moral issues where they arise aside, as far as I'm concerned the only thing wrong with aesthetic "vulgarity" is that some people don't recognize it for what it is, so that mere entertainment drives out art, the merely pleasurable drives out the work that is spiritually sustaining. But does the connoisseur of haute cuisine . . . imperfect analogy on the way . . . not appreciate a grilled hot dog? That's his loss.

Apologies for the misconceived and therefore potentially misleading category.

I share at least half the blame here. and while i assume my commentary on the issue makes this obvious, clearly I don't make any value judgment based on this. I'm quite proud of my taste, and of what i do!

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Thank you, Helene, for moving the topic.

kfw writes:

Apologies for the misconceived and therefore potentially misleading category.

None required. It’s important (and fun) to hash these things out.

I define a guilty pleasure as something you enjoy that is indefensible from an aesthetic standpoint but you like it anyway. Singing along with Sondheim cannot qualify as a guilty pleasure; singing along with ABBA, as I used to do, does.

Guilty pleasure movies: Where Love Has Gone, with Bette Davis facing off against Susan Hayward. Body of Evidence, the Madonna thriller about people having S&M sex in Oregon. Taylor and Burton in The Sandpiper. Marlene Dietrich in The Devil is a Woman. The Dirty Dozen.

Guilty pleasure television: Project Runway, True Hollywood Story, The Tudors.

Guilty pleasure reading: Daphne du Maurier, ‘Forever Amber,’ anything by Edna Ferber. (Contemporary writing of the same ilk does not appeal to me at all for some reason.)

Truth to tell, I am not really ashamed of enjoying any of the foregoing..........

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Blame my lost remote control, but it started by being too bonded to my sofa to change the station after So You Think You Can Dance. I am addicted to Don't Forget the Lyrics, even though I never heard of half the artists whose songs provide the challenge.

And speaking of lyrics, this past weekend (going :)) my parents hosted us to an evening where a pianist, who had accompanied Margaret Whiting, Judy Garland, et al., gave us an earful of Cole Porter. We ranged in age from 90 1/2 (my dad) to going-on-14 (nephew), and the one who absolutely knew all the lyrics -- down to the exact preposition or pronoun -- was my 21-year-old niece.

Our table was also the loudest in the sing-along section. Talk about guilty! :(

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Where Love Has Gone, with Bette Davis facing off against Susan Hayward.

YES! ESP lives! Just last Tuesday I was telling a friend at lunch about that scene and how I couldn't imagine any two tougher divas doing the ultimate of this kind of scene--but that I also thought they must have done umpteen thousand takes and still Hayward couldn't quite get all the amusement out of her face from watching Davis.

To wit: Hayward: 'Mother, why do have to make it sound so dirty?'

Davis: "You have devoted your life to muddt andt fildth!!!!"

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Where Love Has Gone, with Bette Davis facing off against Susan Hayward.

YES! ESP lives! Just last Tuesday I was telling a friend at lunch about that scene and how I couldn't imagine any two tougher divas doing the ultimate of this kind of scene--but that I also thought they must have done umpteen thousand takes and still Hayward couldn't quite get all the amusement out of her face from watching Davis.

To wit: Hayward: 'Mother, why do have to make it sound so dirty?'

Davis: "You have devoted your life to muddt andt fildth!!!!"

"Sculptress! Pagan! Alley cat!"

"With you, art and sex go hand in hand."

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and know by heart just about every line of "Are You Being Served?"

there doesn't seem *anything* wrong with that to me. its a fantastic show!!!

I'm inclined to agree with aurora, bart. Your 'guilty pleasures' don't seem all that guilty, not to me anyway. :)

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I define a guilty pleasure as something you enjoy that is indefensible from an aesthetic standpoint but you like it anyway. Singing along with Sondheim cannot qualify as a guilty pleasure; singing along with ABBA, as I used to do, does.
I a perfect world, I'd agree with you, dirac. But this is possibly too idealistic, though fair and honorable.

For example:

Singing along with Sondheim in the Miami Dolphins locker room might be something a sane (male) person would wish to avoid. :)

Referencing 'Forever Amber" as one of your sources in an academic publication about the reign of Charles II might have a negative impact on your hopes for tenure. :(

Drawing moral lessons from "Keeping Up Appearances" when dining with people who have devoted their lives to Darfur or climate change could possibly give others the impression that you are not entirely serious. :dry:

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Where Love Has Gone, with Bette Davis facing off against Susan Hayward.

YES! ESP lives! Just last Tuesday I was telling a friend at lunch about that scene and how I couldn't imagine any two tougher divas doing the ultimate of this kind of scene--but that I also thought they must have done umpteen thousand takes and still Hayward couldn't quite get all the amusement out of her face from watching Davis.

To wit: Hayward: 'Mother, why do have to make it sound so dirty?'

Davis: "You have devoted your life to muddt andt fildth!!!!"

"Sculptress! Pagan! Alley cat!"

"With you, art and sex go hand in hand."

Wow -- I don't know this one (shuffles off to put it on her rental list)

Begging the guilty part, I've been slurping up the Food Channel recently (pun mostly intended) and think Alton Brown is a fun, fun guy.

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Wow -- I don't know this one (shuffles off to put it on her rental list)
Thinking the same.
Begging the guilty part, I've been slurping up the Food Channel recently (pun mostly intended) and think Alton Brown is a fun, fun guy.
Channel schmannel. Food. Just plain -- or not so plain -- food.

"Slurping." Good one, Sandi! :)

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