Follow Up

In the comments thread to my post on [Charlie Brown, advertising, and whatever comes after postmodernism](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/charlie-brown-postmodern), reader Michael makes an important point:

> If everything is a reference to a reference to a reference, as so much creative work is currently, then audiences are forced to either “get” everything, or else be alienated by everything. It may work in the short term for a target audience, but the work won’t hold up for long. Once the references become irrelevant, the work built on references becomes, likewise, irrelevant.

That’s the crux and the crisis: you’re creating things that won’t make sense 20 years from now. Or 20 minutes, given the speed of our culture.

Certainly there are things forged out of this postmodern, paste-it-together ethic that will last — probably because they have some artistic achievement beyond their ability to string together pop-culture references. “Single Ladies” is really well shot and performed. If you put it in a time capsule, it will still make sense, the same way Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” holds up.

But as an extreme example, consider Weezer’s deliberately memetastic “Pork and Beans” video ([link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQHPYelqr0E), not embeddable). It’s fantastic and won’t make a lick of sense to anyone who didn’t use YouTube from 2004 to 2008.

I’m finally over the annoying illness that’s kept me on a reduced schedule these past few weeks. I’m calling it bronchitis, though my doctor never used that term, and it’s possible it was something else entirely. In general I’m not a person who gets sick for more than a day or two, so it was frustrating to feel lousy this long.

It wasn’t until conversations at a cocktail on Saturday that I realized a huge chunk of my writer/actor/lawyer friends have or had the same thing, with symptoms roughly as follows:

* Gurgling when you lie down to sleep.

* Mild fever, or chills or headache — but not enough to make you feel sick-sick.

* The kind of cough which, if you heard it come from an actor in a period drama, would telegraph the character’s impending death by consumption.

The insidious thing about this bug is that I generally didn’t feel bad enough to go the doctor. I’d skip the gym or go to bed early, but truly thought I’d be able to ride it out. I finally went in to get some drugs, and was better in a week.

In conversations with everyone who’s had it, the treatment always seems to comprise three things: an antibiotic, a decongestant and cough syrup. The brands change, but that’s always the cocktail. Of the three, the behind-the-counter decongestant (Claritin-D) required the most paranoia-inducing paperwork. ((It contains pseudoephedrine, with is used to make meth, so the government tracks every sale.)) But the prescription cough syrup was also unsettling, because it worked so well and felt so good. I was careful to limit my doses.

Just when I thought I’d beaten the bug, it roared back to life like Glenn Close leaping from the bathtub in Fatal Attraction. I’m pretty sure now that last jolt was just me kicking the cough syrup, despite my moderation.

Still, it feels good to feel like me again. Though I now have less excuse for endless Fallout 3 sessions.