Other Notes
Why is it that our society seems to admire, without reservation, those who strive for the best in sports and athletic endeavors, and despise those who strive for the same thing in the arts?
If you love the world cup of music, the championship of films, the record-setting paintings, and poetry that is better than anyone else's poetry, you are considered a snob and an elitist. And I'm not talking about Oscar or Grammy winners here, which are the equivalent of TV reality show competitions. I am talking about "The White Ribbon", "The Third Man", "Blade Runner", "Solaris", "The Seventh Seal", Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Velvet Underground, Tom Waits....
All right... I see how it breaks down. We know the exact time of the best 100 meters, and the exact score of the seventh game of the Stanley Cup final.
We don't know if Leonard Cohen is really just a hack or not.
We do know that we love a lot of films that people like me consider to be utter drivel, like "The Reader", "The Book Thief", "Shawshank Redemption", "Forrest Gump", "Hugo", "The Departed", and so on, and so on.