Great cheap fast wow gold piece in the WSJ by my neighbor Eric Felten on the lip synched Super Bowl national anthem and the Yo Yo Milli Vanilli situation at the inauguration:

'Whatever the motivation, the fear of risking mistakes has led musicians to deny who they are as performers. The most disheartening thing about the Inauguration Day quartet's nonperformance was the lengths to which they went to make sure that nothing they did on the platform could be heard. Cellist Yo Yo Ma put soap on the hair of his bow so that it would slip across the strings without creating even a wisp of sound. The inner workings of the piano were disassembled. There is something pitiful and pitiable about musicians hobbling their own voices. Nowadays, it seems that when it really counts musicians are willing to put the wire on the pavement and walk along it as if they were doing something just as daring as the real thing.'

Unlike Eric, I'm not a musician, so I don't feel comfortable saying that Ma et al should have handled the situation differently (though it did bug me a little bit that we didn't learn about the pre recording until days later). But there is the whole question of what it means when the public ceases to care about the distinction between real and simulated. For years I've been sounding the alarm about Creeping Surrealism. I need to re open that file.

If you're going to talk about "Homestyle" cookies under the banner of creeping surrealism, then how about Robert Baker's formulation for using a paste of finely minced chicken, with some skin added, to make chicken nuggets in any shape? You really don't think this created food came that way naturally, do you?

Or take artist Scott Siedman's "Portrait of Abraham Lincoln" that you all ooohed and aahed over in the Kit just about the time of the Inaugural. Rendered in a style like that of Thomas Hart Benton, Siedman places Obama within the traditional American "heartland" mythologies. To view Siedman's other works, it might be fun to check out the paintings in a fairly recent show titled "Obscenery."

His statement about this series of paintings:

On land and sea, small figures of humankind, solitary and in clusters, demonstrate an endless and irresistible appetite for folly. Faced with the utter failure of our economic, political and spiritual institutions to take any responsibility for their part in the coming collapse, I offer a few heartfelt narratives, where we perform with passion and humor, where we speak the unspeakable, where we struggle against shame and threats and eff Eff in sunny innocent Impressionist gardens, on stormy seas, or with giant ridiculous surrogate balloons.

I don't believe in progress, good taste or the God of Abraham, but I recognize their power as ideas and I have devoted my artistic life to debunking them. They all share a common fear of human sexuality. The spiritually enlightened try to rise above it, the cultured class speak of it in whispers, and the God fearing bludgeon it with fear. I paint a world where those ideas have no power, where Eve takes Adam by the hand and escapes from Eden. She blows God a kiss, moons him and they exit laughing.

To me, the real danger of creeping surrealism is not just that we value the fake over the real; it is that we may start to forget that this is what we are doing. We will begin to suppress and deny our own sense of reality to the point where we lose all judgment.

In all of us there is some innate sense of right and wrong, good and evil, attractive and ugly. When we start to reject our own reactions as unworthy, then we are starting to enter the realm of self deception. We deny the reality that we perceive in favor of some other reality we deem superior.

For example, those Siedmen paintings. I understand, I guess, the intent of the artist, but they fail to move me in any manner except revulsion. Should I suppress that response and replace it with the "correct" one? I don't believe so.

In the same way one can argue until one is blue in the face that pre recorded music is no big deal, but to some of us it just seems, you know, wrong. Should I be ashamed of this reaction when the reality is so much more perfect? Again, to me the answer is no.

Self deception is not a virtue. It's like a story one of the former assistants to Prince Charles told about the Royal family and blood sports. He commented that many didn't really much care for fox hunting and the like. They just did it because it was the kind if thing Royals are supposed to do.

Creating an artificial world, both externally and internally, means a willingness to fool ourselves. People are forced to pretend that those musicians are really playing. Pretend that "dramatic re creations" on television are real. Pretend that we like certain things when we do not. We begin to lose touch with our own tastes and values. And that's about as surreal as it gets. I also understand why, in venues where it is difficult to have a full acoompaniment onstage, singers wind up lip synching (though they could always sing to the recorded music, and many do). However, I think it is important even in these situations that everyone fully understand what is being done. Also, even organizers under those conditions could make other choices which, though not as desirable, have the virtue of preserving the immediate reality of the circumstances. For instance, these days they could stream live video of performers from a more copacetic location. Or, of course, they could just apologize, say conditions will not permit live performance, and move on with the remainder of the program. Would that make people happy? Probably not. I think many people, if pressed, would rather hear a pre recorded performance than none at all, given the choice. But a decision not to perform would be real. That network is darned dangerous, I'm telling ya. Meanwhile, I prepped a London Broil in marinade for this evening. And the new issue of Cook's Illustrated has a really interesting method for cooking a beef tenderloin (Chateaubriand). I don't even remember the last time I had one or could afford one. But boy does it look good. And I haven't made corn fritters in a coon's age may have to make them tomorrow. The kids love them (I do, too).

I share the concerns over creeping surrealism. One solution would be to do the sensible thing, and have inaugurations without string quartet performances. Democracy will survive without faux performances.

I have a sort of tangential rant that ties in with the creeping surrealism problem, which I suppose is creeping visualism, which is a phrase I just coined for the increasingly promiscuous use of videos and whatnot to accompany music.

Nowadays, you simply CANNOT release a new song (I was going to horribly date myself by saying "new album" or worse, "new record") without it being accompanied by a portentous video for the MTV and VH 1 crowd. The music industry spends a disproportionate large part of its time producing something which isn't actually music it is visual, to the point that in many cases it overwhelms the actual music and displaces it. And this is where we get into the variant of creeping realism.
Welcome to join Safewow February Valentine's Day Specail Deal for every customer. Using 6% discount code "SVP6" for any Safewow products or 8% discount $100+ code "SVP8" to buy WOW GOLD US/EU or other items on safewow from Feburary 11 to Feburary 13.
At the same time , safewow new member system is also online now,Don't lose chance to be a new member and you can gain extral 1%-8% off for buying any Products.
Safewow WOW GOLD link:https://www.safewow.com/wow-gold-us

https://www.safewow.com/uploads/Safewow/EDM/valentines_offers_seo.jpg