Rose Woodhouse

Elizabeth Picciuto was born and reared on Long Island, and, as was the custom for the time and place, got a PhD in philosophy. She freelances, mainly about disability, but once in a while about yeti. Mother to three children, one of whom is disabled, two of whom have brown eyes, three of whom are reasonable cute, you do not want to get her started talking about gardening.

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  1. 80s sword and sorcery flicks, just about any time. Taken under proper operating conditions and for specified lengths of time, Troma movies.

    There was this one time I watched about 60 episodes of “Jackass” over the course of two days. I never need to do that again, but about episode 6 I started laughing a lot and I was seriously deranged by hour 30. It was an Experience.

  2. One of the first CDs I ever bought is Air Supply’s Greatest Hits. I still listen to them on occasion. Does that count?

    • My girlfriend listens to one of the top-40 music stations a lot, and I’ve started to even enjoy some of the songs, even though I don’t know the names and probably misunderstand the lyrics. And in our mid to late thirties, she and I are both, to put it mildly, outside that station’s target demographic.

  3. When I first got my Kindle, I downloaded all the Tom Corbett novels from Gutenberg. They’re about space cadets who fight crime. Lest you forget they’re space cadets, they use the word “space” a few times in ever y speech: “Why, that dirty space rat! He needs to be taught some space manners, and I’m just the spaceman to do it!”

    Loved them.

  5. I enjoy loads of transgressive art. Take very considerable pleasure in the works of John Waters. He’s spent his whole career striving for Rongness. Surely he will stand, as Toulouse-Lautrec was in his own age, as the greatest exemplar and monstrance upon which the pale underbelly of America was displayed, in all its depravity and dark glory.

  6. The Stainless Steel Rat books. The cocktail-hour sounds of Karl Zero. Ed Wood movies. Pamela Anderson.

    • Okay, Ed Wood movies are bad. The Stainless Steel Rat books aren’t bad! They’re hijinks stories, there’s a long tradition.

  8. Rose were you around for the aesthetic-realism, or more precisely, objectively-orderable-value-in-art wars around here? We could have used your professional services at that time, I think.

    I argued that it’s possible that some pieces of art can have greater artistic value than others, but that there may not be any way we could demonstrate that a particular piece is of grater value than another to a skeptic of that particular claim. I actually did that in the context of at least a lack of commitment to aesthetic realism, if not outright aesthetic anti-realism.

    And that was merely on the question of comparing to pieces. Clearly, the category of “bad” art is a bridge quite a bit beyond just the question, “Is this better than that?”. So for now, i think I do have to put “bad” in scare quotes. Or maybe I just have to say I’m an agnostic about the idea of bad art, especially with respect to art I like. I’m open to the possibility that some of what I like is bad art, but I’d have no idea how to be sure in a given instance.

    Two candidates: the music of The Wallflowers/Jakob Dylan, and eye/brain-candy shows on USA like Royal Pains, White Collar, etc.

    • Missed that whole thread. I addressed some of the reasons to think there is a fact of the matter whether some art is better than others. And pissed some off, I think, for not having looked at the earlier thread (sorry, joined recently!).

      Was planning on doing a how-do-you-know-the-good-ones post soon. I’m reasonably sympathetic to Hume, but there are some problems. But yes, the opinion of any one person about any one work of art cannot be determinative.

      I’ve got a total philosophical crush on Hume.

      • NO need to be sorry! We definitely would have been better off for your views in the earlier threads, it’s true. But I think it’s better to get them straight-up first rather than in reaction to lots of other arguments. then we can argue later.

        Having done The Good, perhaps you would consider talking about Bad Art – what it is, how to spot it?

  9. I am not ashamed that I have both “MMMBop” and the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” on my iPod.

    Well… maybe a little ashamed.

  10. I remain madly in love with commercials from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. (Some of the 90’s ones, but not many.)

    • Me too! My husband is exasperated whenever I cook bacon and flip my hair singing the Enjoli song.

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