I think the key draw of the pearl parties is the real-time aspect of watching them, as well as the mild suspense. A lot of isolated people enjoy that, I imagine.
When my mother was in her last years of an incurable, slow-decline disease, she started watching baseball games. My reaction: what have you done with the woman who had season tickets to the orchestra and the opera, subscribed to the WSJ, and had other near-performative intellectual pursuits? It wasn’t dementia; she was still quite sharp until the final couple of weeks.
I finally concluded that what she liked about games was the immediacy, the slight sense of participating, and the unknown outcome. The duration probably matched her attention span. (And, knowing she’d be dead within a couple of years, her interest in conventional news declined.)
not sure what you mean, but they all did sound quite the same as each other. authentic? i dunno. i was living in Seattle during the rise of “grunge” and it seemed to devolve into mumbled lyrics over crunchy guitars and even crunchier angst.
back to the topic:
pearl parties,
pearls before swine,
pearls of wisdom,
pearl earring…
whichever describes Pearl Jam is up to you. the really fun “origin story” is how Cat Butt became Mudhoney.
