The meta-review: That's just Wong
By Tony Phillips
May 22, 2006
San Diego--When asked by my friend, Leopard J. Ferry, if I might do a story for Vyuz, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to, but I gave in because a) they’re paying me a gazillion dollars, and b) he had a splendid idea. It was Leopard’s thinking that I could write an opinion piece about local opinion pieces.
You see, if I had an opinion about a thing and wrote about it – well that’s old hat. Everybody does opinion pieces. But if I had an opinion about local opinion pieces in general, like, for instance, that they inflate insignificant topics to suit the author’s skewed interests, that they typically reflect the opinions of advertisers more than anyone else and that they just generally suck something awful, well that’s a bit more novel.
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(Photo: Leopard J. Ferry) |
I would really enjoy such a piece whether I wrote it or just
thought about it until the back of my head itched. I chose the
latter. So, instead of a meta-opinion piece, I’m going to do a
meta-review. Now when a writer goes to a restaurant and writes about
it, that’s a review. When I write about writers who write about
restaurants, that’s a meta-review.
Here’s how you know you’re reading a review – reviewers like to string together three word phrases that consist of a meaningless adverb, a snooty adjective and a banal noun. For example, the San Diego Union Tribune’s George Hauer wrote of the Golden Dragon Asian Bistro that it boasted a “decidedly urban décor.” |
Gag. He resisted the temptation to write that it offers a “blandly uninteresting fare,” an “obsequiously pedantic wait-staff,” and a “tooth-grindingly postmodern interior.” He should have written that, but he didn’t.
By the way, the adverb-adjective-noun form of review also works for literature. If you want to sound smart about books, say things like “brilliantly crafted ouvré,” “stunningly Kafkaesque tour-de-force,” and “triumphantly triumphant triumph.” It works. Trust me.
But back to the subject, what does not work is to encourage Uptown diners to go to a stark, boring, uninspired abomination just because its dark wood and symmetry make it trendy. That’s not a review, that’s an advertisement. Hauer could have told us that the inside of the Golden Dragon looks like an Ikea catalog dropped by, sprang to life and vomited explosively. As to the “cuisine” (that means food), he could have told us that any place that has the audacity to call itself an Asian Bistro and the effrontery to charge me 30 bucks for glorified orange chicken with soup, an egg roll and two beers not only deserves to go out of business, it deserves to be raided by officers from the Department of Civil Decency.
A good review of the former Jimmy Wong’s Golden Dragon at 4th and University would lead with, “Warning: Kitsch Ahead!” What the new ownership has done to a landmark beneath the famous neon sign outside that storied venue is an atrocity. It is yet another instance of caving to the soulless nastification that has brought Hillcrest to the precipice of its own demise. The Golden Dragon is emblematic of the vertical stretching and corporatization of a neighborhood that for decades was one of San Diego’s most vibrant and by far its most delightfully weird.
But I guess now I’m doing a review. I should stop that. This isn’t a review; it’s a meta-review. It isn’t supposed to be about my opinion; it’s supposed to be about my opinion about others’ opinions. So here’s my opinion: when it comes to the obliteration of history and its replacement with schmaltzy, tasteless, over-priced pablum, others’ opinions are “strikingly dimensionless panderings.” But for preserving a sign that we all know and love, nothing about the new Golden Dragon is right. Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be Wong.
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Tony Phillips is editor of the Fifth Avenue Gazette.
