Pre tension
Newtown Civic Centre Sydney around 1990 methinks. Two mediocre punk bands played then a soecial surprise performance piece was staged. The piece consisted of several very fearsome looking lesbians smashing the shit out of these two old twin tub washing machines as a more petite member of their group shouted anti men slogans into a mike whilst an intense industrial tape loop played in the background. The night descended into a shambles after that when the next band came on and the room divided into lesbians vs others. Washing machine parts and Strongbow cider bottles were hurled across the hall and you can guess the rest
(rodgerroop, Thu 6 Oct 2005, 0:34, Reply)

The Arnolfini in Bristol
Nice building, good caff, good bookshop. But the art they put in there is some of the wankiest, po-faced self-important up-its'-own-arse shite I have ever seen, this includes several degree shows ( including the one I was part of ).
( uncle bastard is twanging a dan moi, Thu 6 Oct 2005, 0:16, Reply)

I used to teach drama
Drama itself tends to attract pretentious people, and drama teachers are no exception.

I used to teach in community/achievement centres in deprived neighbourhoods which meant I could teach pretty much what I liked - no curriculum for me!

So what did I teach these 10-year-olds who we'd dragged in from the local crack den? Pretending to be a tree? Guess the animal?

No, I insisted on doing Shakespeare and the concept of satire.

And you know what? The kids loved it. : )
(Pachey, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 22:37, Reply)

University - home of pretentious bollox
If you want pretentious bollox, go to Uni. There's lots of it about. I went to Oxford and on the whole I met some v nice people but I didn't half see a lot of pretentious wankers: 1) girl who used to dance in the quadrangle semi-naked in the rain, because she said it was the Muse caressing her skin encouraging her to paint.
2) I was tutored by a certain well-known Irish poet cum critic who regularly appears on the Late Review / Newsnight Review and he wrote/writes the most appalling poetry. Never understood any of his lectures or tutorials. Everything had to be related to Ireland in some tenuous way. But to be fair to him he wrote me a nice letter after my Finals.
3) Lots of "normal" paupers pretending to be friends with rich people who own half of Cornwall and pretending they like them and braying loudly cus they think it's ironic.
Sigh....I loved being a student. Not.
(SpongyMonkey is an honorary East Anglian on, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 19:26, Reply)

Meltyyyyyyyyyyy
A couple of years back the girlfriend dragged me to a University drama show that one of her friends was taking part in.

After an hour of shite about two girls living in a flat, the ladies involved came to the front of the stage, stripped
naked and proceeded to wank each other silly while the lights strobed and they screamed that the world was melting.

Best £2 I ever spent.
(electrichamster, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 17:01, Reply)

Jamie Oliver!
..no, seriously!.. I mean, Spag-Bol with ground NUTMEG!!?.. Who is he fucking kidding!
( mikenco, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 16:59, Reply)

At Reading festival
in the olden days when they had a cinema tent, they used to show 'art house' films of absolute toss between the the maine presentations.
They must have thought a bunch of pissed up stoners would be the only people that would sit through that shite.
How wrong they were...
( Monsieur Monster I heard Seriously talk the first time. in here., Wed 5 Oct 2005, 16:55, Reply)

any youth drama production
you know the kind of thing, you're at some school concert to see your mate play the piano, or play in his band, or sing a song or something. midway through the concert some of the people doing Drama will put on some serious play, involving pretentious crap like having someone next to one of the actors putting their hand on his shoulder and saying what he's thinking.

one i saw recently was like this.

one 'actor' pointed at someone in the audience and said "bang bang you're dead". then someone else said it, then someone else and then there ended up about 10 people shouting it and pointing over and over again with a crescendo until the sound was annoyingly ubiquitous.

then suddenly they all stopped.

and the first one said "bang bang we're all dead"

that was it. it got applause.

apparently it was something about gun culture. sounds like a load of old bollocks to me. i hate drama.
( Spunky McPunk not dead yet, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 16:52, Reply)

iPod

... when St Steve presented the first ipod i thought: so what, it's another mp3 player, it's not gonna change anything. (thus steves praise being pretentious bollocks)

how wrong i was. again.
( bierbelly, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 16:40, Reply)

My oh my...
Imogen Heeps album.

Bought it today and am BITTERLY disappointed. What a waste of money.

Ugh.

If you've read my blog, you'll know that already...
( Argh. There be scallys in the ranks., Wed 5 Oct 2005, 16:26, Reply)

Apples
On my Graphic Design Degree course about 8 years ago, we had a couple of short projects based around certain words. One of those words was 'junk'.

I was too lazy to do anything so on the morning of my presentation i grabbed a bag of mouldy apples from my kitchen (from an ill-attempted health kick) and I wrote wanky phrases on each one in marker pen.

My tutor liked it haha, the daft 'apeth.
(Evilhorlix, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 16:26, Reply)

stoned watching tv
The most pretentious crap i have personally witnessed was my now ex bf, sitting in front of the TV with his friends and fellow band members, smoking pot and complaining how the world didnt understand them.
For years*...

They are probably still there....

*Dutch social system

(Sad thing is they were quite good, but they rarely had gigs since they were stoned and watching tv most of the time)
(bovine intervention, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 16:21, Reply)

Oh god...
There are two kinds of art student here at Kutztown.

1: The kind that wear black and go on about how their life is pain, blah blah blah, and

2: The kind with no higher brain function. Needless to say, I am of this group.

So my very first day in classes, I have Two-Dimensional Design. Lovely, you might say. Sounds like fun.

NEG.

The other students are in a circle in the back of the room, around the teacher's desk. I push through, and what do I see?

There is the teacher, sitting on top of her desk in a Buddha pose, painting her arms and talking about how every line breathes.

I can't beleive I'm paying $20,000 a year to listen to this crap.
(Sir Dixon Dongs Good evening, gentlemen., Wed 5 Oct 2005, 15:21, Reply)

I once had a party
My art-school friend turned up in the most pretentious outfit. She was dressed completely in black, put some kind of white make-up on, and was wearing a ridiculous hat.

Mind you, it was a Halloween party.
(Pachey, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 14:59, Reply)

GUTTED
Im gutted, I signed up the other week when the police QOTW was up, I wait to get past newbie Tuesday. Now I have nothing to share on this subject whatsoever. Im Sorry
(Strongbow_SY, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 14:16, Reply)

Media lecturers and bad poetry...
Oh boy… Having gone to university on a media production course, I was hoping to avoid pretentious arses talking about film. Instead I got pretentious arses making films. Bugger. Although the students were vastly annoying (90% of them were there on daddy’s money anyway) it was the lecturers that took the biscuit. On pitching our five minute thriller our lecturer came out with a suggestion that will forever echo in my brain:

“Instead of them pulling out baseball bats, couldn’t they pull out enormous inflatable bananas instead?”

Arty cnut. However, the crème de la crap came when attending a short film / poetry evening where all manner of farty pretentiousness was on display (including my own). There was one woman who read poetry. Now, the poetry in question would have been bad enough in itself had it not have been for her occasional outbursts about her privates which were done at three times the volume, right in the middle of a sentence. The first time she did it, we all jumped in out seats but by the end of her poem, we were under the table pissing ourselves laughing. We thought she might have tourettes or something but I think she was just trying to be controversial. Or maybe c*ntroversial if you like.

To give you a feel for it, I have composed the following example. It is by no means as hilarious as the original.


I am a million dewdrops
I have eternity in my hands
I live on a dozen shellfish C*NT!

The woods know my pain, my wants
Clouds mask my pity
IT SMELLS FISHY!

Heavy headlamps in maple syrup
Yearning FANNY over furthermost hills
With no remorse
PUBIC LICE!

Separated from heaven with daffodil raindrops
FISH-MITTEN!!!
No bicycle can live in my way
No man knows my
HAIRY COD PIE!

I’d go on, but I think you get the picture.

Yay, there goes my cherry…!
(Mr Evian, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 13:25, Reply)

Just one more
The bloke in the pork pie hat and aviator sunglasses riding a miniature chopper bike outside the Economist building. Almost everyone at my company left the office at some point to have a look at the "Nathan Barley" down the road...
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 11:34, Reply)

Smashing Pumpkins
Mike Fishcake,

No, it was Edmonton, Canada, but I think the year was 1996.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 10:47, Reply)

as per emvee
pens that come in colours like celadon ice and tranquil indigo ... they should try spunky pearl, on the blob burgundy, and golden shower instead
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 10:42, Reply)

Twitz-Mctiger
Yes you 'need say more'. Coldplay may be shite but what make them pretentious exactly?

The phrase 'Need I say more' is very pretentious. I hope you all realise
(you're all a bunch of twats anyway, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 10:14, Reply)

Most pretentious website?
Dave Perry, self-professed UK God of Gaming... his website gamesanimal should give you a better idea


(stonersmurf stuckin' foned, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 9:50, Reply)

Russian Tongue Twisters
I did GCSE Russian - don't you know

Can't be bothered to try and type in Russian so here's my attempt to translate into Roman alphabet:

"Boyeeek Toopagoop Toopagoop Binky Beechock"

"Na trav-yeh drava, na drav-yeh trava"

I have no idea what either means anymore, but the second one is something about sitting on green grass.
(Pearly Pearl, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 9:08, Reply)

some kind of art
the other day i went to some kind of art event featuring some kind of art that was different and new to me. later i went on b3ta to tell everyone about my ignorance of, and unwillingness to learn about, something that was diffrent and new to me.
(e p f, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 8:47, Reply)

i went to drama school...
...darling...
(kalimah, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 7:20, Reply)

Kazza: re Barley:
I think the problem stemmed from the involvement of the usually reliable Chris Morris in the adaptation for the screen and the miscasting of the Barley character. The bloke from series two of Absolute Power looked nothing like the written Barley nor the photograph which once appeared in an early episode of Cunt in TVGoHome.

Anyway, my cousin (former trainee poet, currently "writing a children's book") went to Pembroke at Cambridge and thus had a bunch of loud-ass betoothed yahs at his wedding a couple of years ago. One of them read out some poetry in a special poetry-oration voice using special poetry-enhancing facial expressions whilst holding the book she was reading from in that strange manner employed by people when reading aloud from books in public (as if they're holding a soggy paper bag full of bruised testicles). The only thing she forgot to do was to appear theatrically drained by the sheer emotion of the reading when she finished.
( wingpig wish I'd known about liquify eighteen years ago, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 6:14, Reply)

Talking of Nathan Barley, which a couple of people are
The TV version of this was pretty pretentious in itself. Did anyone else get the impression that whoever did it didn't get the original joke (if you remember 'Cunt' from TVGOHome). Unless I didn't get it and it wasn't funny in the first place...I mean Nathan Barley was meant to be a cunt, not just a rather likeable tit
(Kazza , loathing myself so you don't have to, Wed 5 Oct 2005, 4:08, Reply)

pretentious things
Somebody once asked me if i had a "visual representation" of my girlfriend, someone had to explain to me that he meant a "photo"

Somehow i came off looking really stupid, and he avoided being pretentious in anyway at all....go figure!
(Happy Welsh, Tue 4 Oct 2005, 23:55, Reply)

Revolutionary
Once went to some art thing that had a video of a woman just repeating the words "I am a revolutionary" over and over.

At the same thing I saw a girl walking about with a photo of Che Guevera in her pocket. I asked if it was signed and she looked unimpressed.

The event was saved by a giant painting of David Hasselhoff though so it wasn't all bad.
(cammy, Tue 4 Oct 2005, 23:14, Reply)

Are you kidding me?
I've done KS3 drama, and a lot of lessons the teacher couldn't be arsed and so showed us sixth formers rehearsing for exams and whatnot.

It couldn't have been more pretentious if it was served on a bed of organic rocket, drizzled with balsamic vinegar accompanying a lean free-range chicken breast lightly seared in a mint jus.
( ArthurTheRat, Tue 4 Oct 2005, 22:30, Reply)

Food at Gatwick Airport
When I check in for a flight, and go for a sandwich, I don't want a 'dolphin friendly' tuna sandwich on 'organic rye bread' with 'rocket leaf salad'. I want a fucking tuna sandwich which I don't have to pay about a fiver for. Even if it kills dolphins and is made from GM bread; like I give a shit.

Pretentious sandwiches. Bah.
(insert username here, Tue 4 Oct 2005, 22:21, Reply)