Spent the weekend with longtime friends, which always gets the mind hopping from “thens” and “nows”. Before arriving, and since, I’ve had “Radio Song” by REM with KRS-One in my head. There’s something about it sonically that is gooey in my skull now. Could it be that it’s bouncy with bass? That it’s from when it was unique to have a guest artist on a song, before it became almost mandatory?
The lyrics are okay, but I don’t even know if it’s among my favorite 15 REM songs — and I don’t know REM particularly well — but there it is mentally rolling around. Does this stick in your head, too?
When revisiting Out of Time, I rarely listen to the whole thing, but at a minimum I listen to the bookend songs. “Radio Song” and “Me In Honey”. In the epic 5-hour karaoke concert that plays constantly in my head full of guest starts from past and present, I duet with one person on “Me In Honey” and we rock the shit out of that song, then never talk with each other again, having reached the peak of visceral human communication and humor.
Pop music is a mongrel, forever gaining vitality borrowing and mingling from other pedigrees. It’s slutty mongrel. No. Wait. It’s a sex-positive mongrel. Iggy Azalea has two massive hits and has taken knocks for being an Australian female rapper with “southern rap” affectations.
Any artist should be free to steal from other sources and try any persona. If it works, it works. We don’t look to artists for morals or history lessons. I didn’t know who Ariana Grande was by name. I knew her as the girl with the one-note voice on the t.v. show “Sam & Cat” that was forever the background television noise while I was in the kitchen cleaning or making meals, or in the dining room writing, gaming, or doing dark and dank deeds. She’s the actress with the dyed red hair in this clip:
Ariana Grande & Iggy Azalea. Interested in what they chat about? Me neither. Zzzz…
That one-note voice affection is, as actors say, “a choice”, right? I heard Grande was a recording artist, but ALL OF THOSE Nickelodeon and Disney starlets are recording artists. No big deal. All those songs are boring aspirational or first-love stuff. All the more boring when they go into the inevitable “I’m not a kid anymore!” phase as if they are the first ones to discover the fumblings and grindings that generate us all and so shake the world.
I don’t even know if I like Grande’s well-produced hit “Problem”. She has great range, but I keep hearing her one-note tone sitcom actress “choice” throughout. Iggy Azalea raps during the bridge.
Many articles have criticized Azalea for trying to sound “black” or “urban”. A point for debate among music nerds, but not something to be ashamed of. Try everything. Go with what works. Plenty of suburban kids of all races have tried “urban” affectations (Alicia Keys comes to mind). So what? If the music is resonant & fun, let it roll. Any line of music that doesn’t draw from other genres and cultural signifiers is doomed to staleness and extinction.
Iggy Azalea from the U.K Commonwealth Australia. Why Australia, which is plenty awesome, doesn’t fully break the colonial tie is beyond me.
I don’t even know if I like Iggy Azalea. There is something sonically interesting going on, but I’m undecided about whether it is good music or not. I confess to a problem with female musicians in their 20s and early 30s. It’s my advanced age, but even if I would have found them attractive 20 years ago, to see them carousing about advertising their availability now (fine and their right), my gorge rises at it. They just seem like uninteresting people and I have trouble watching them. It’s not them, it’s me. Keep on keepin’ on, kids.
Ariana Grande mentions meeting Azalea at a party thrown by shouty, shouty Katy Perry where they vowed to work together sometime. They have, and it’s a success.
Now, if you want to get upset about Azalea outright stealing a rich vein of music, take her to task for robbing the sing-cheerleader-chant genre from Gwen Stefani. That shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter, red shirt) takes photos with fans outside of his Broadway show The Cripple of Inishmaan . Two police officers stand by. He was doing this when we happened by, and continued as we walked past.
Who/what is New York? The answer is that New York is its people, history, and structures. On to the anecdotes!
Before this past week, the only time I spent in New York City was a crazy 14 hour dash through Manhattan with a friend. Amtrak from Albany to NYC in the morning. Penn Station, waited for The Book of Mormon (lovingly analyzed by me here) ticket lottery (lost), bought tickets regularly, saw the show, ate pizza, walked through Columbus Circle to Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum, bus to Empire State Building, then back to Penn Station for an early-a.m. return to Albany.
I like walking. I like the bustle of people in fair forward motion. I like seeing a variety of people in a variety of social stations engaged in a variety of things.
I like catching up with a super-smart, engaging, clever, kind, and funny friend whom I haven’t had an in-person chat with for over a decade. I like walking with this friend for hours and hours. She made the time on brief notice, and gave good pointers on walking highlights when she had to return home on those work nights.
Crowds hovered around famous pieces. Here Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”. I took photos, too. Behind is “The Dream” by Henri Rosseau
I like art museums. I like going to art museums to finally see in-person pieces I’ve admired as reproduced images (such as Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon which I wrote a speculative piece about). The flaws and character and choices of the bronze or marble, the brushstrokes. I like entering the museum for free with the help of a connection and pretending to be someone I am not. A museum experience is much enhanced by a caper.
I like seeing locations only seen before in print or on screens. The world gets more cozy. The human experience and history more tangible.
A woman on the same level at the MoMA takes my photo as I take hers. We don’t know each other, but here we are locked into each other’s photos for ALL TIME.
I like making mediocre waffles at a complimentary hotel breakfast buffet. I rarely eat more than half of the waffle. I do wince at the waste when throwing it away along with an empty yogurt container, a bowl of Raisin Bran detritus with milk sloshing around, the remainders of eggs never as good as one hopes, and the always disappointing sausage. I still will essay buffet sausage in whatever variation it is proffered in. That’s just the optimist in me.
Family and friends need to know that I always eat all the decent portion fruit I dish up.
I like seeing new things. I like returning to known things. I like being slightly disoriented then figuring my way. I like the cordiality of strangers. I like picking up the indigenous customs and traveling with the herd. I like being asked for directions when I hardly know the area myself.
I like buildings and architecture. I like getting accustomed to places much larger than my usual environment. I don’t like people in shoddy knock-off pop culture themed costumes panhandling money by posing for novelty photos like in Times Square or the Las Vegas Strip. Three Elmos in Times Square within four blocks. Yeesh.
I like looking around and wondering if the more attractive a person is, the more likely it is the person will move to a larger city.
Fox News Headquarters. Motto: “We report, you decide.” I report this corner stank of urine.
I like seeing a vast scope of human achievement, how things have gotten run down, and how things have gotten better. I like seeing a mass of people getting along, living their lives and not losing their minds.
Cyclone fency! Manhattan Bridge, between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
I like knowing good people I am fond of, for year over year, even if the contact is intermittent. I like being worthy of staying in contact with. Across state lines, time zone lines, and nations there are people that I admire and know walking the earth encountering alternating happiness and frustrations, just like me. It gets me out of my smallness to hear the thrums of other heartstrings and sense in the ground the pulsing hums of lives worth knowing. As we climb into middle age, more people we have known will be dead than alive. Having those thrums and hums will become more dear.
No, I did not have the standard New York songs in my mind while in the city. Thankfully. I did have this one by Rufus Wainwright. Semi-consciously, I have hit most of the locations it mentions.
Yes, I did see people, always men, peeing in the open. Mostly transients, but also one guy who was moving merchandise from a van into a shop.
No, I did not buy any “I Love New York” souvenir, though I do agree with the statement.
Detail of “Ugoilno and Archbishop Ruggieri” by Gustave Doré (yes, I have this book).
Two recent dreams the same night. I hope they were separate dreams.
1.) Two men laying on the ground, caked in blood, one gnawing off the ear of the other person who lies passive and closes his eyes every few seconds yielding or savoring getting devoured. Reminiscent of (I had the visual but had to look this up) Ugolino perpetually gnawing on the skull of his nemesis Archbishop Ruggieri in Dante’s Inferno (XXXII, 128-9).
2.) I duck out of a music show in a dignified theater with my dream-logic friend Taylor Swift. We get to the lobby, after a quick commiseration how BORING that show is, Swift starts peppering me with questions about how the public employee pension system works in California. I explain California is not my state, but I can send some info along. We decide a direct message via Twitter will be the best way to convey those links so she’ll see them.
Snort if you want, as if YOU have never had a dream about perpetual cannibalism and chatting economics with Taylor Swift.
(Left) Ugolino snacking on Archbiship Ruggieri, illustration by Barry Moser. (Right) Taylor Swift.
I buy Kanye West albums and enjoy them. I have seen clips of the porno Kim Kardashian made with Ray J. Didn’t think we’d be mashing up Kanye music videos with the pneumatic Kim Kardashian’s sex tape, but here we are, United States of America.
The motorcycle has more personality than Kardashian. To give the video more depth, take it as a story about West loving his bike, but a woman keeps intruding AND RUINING IT:
What this video needs, what keeps it from being genius instead of studiously obnoxious, is a cut scene of Kardashian & West riding through the forest moon of Endor on the speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi. Imagine how awesome it would be to have Kim pressing her bubbies against West as they pass by Luke & Leia evading Storm Troopers! Play the song while watching the video below:
Since West’s Late Registration (2005), an album I’ve listened to a lot, I haven’t listened more than a few times to each album that followed. Since the media labeled him an egomaniac, and a lot of his songs afterward have been his ownership of being an egomaniac, the songs don’t stick with me as much. Meaning, as a fellow egomaniac, I hear Kanye West songs and the thoughts don’t seem to be that much different than my usual waking, self-aggrandizing thoughts. His music does not provide me a significantly different human experience. People go: “Wow, Kanye West is an over-the-top and daring asshole.” I go: “Uh, this is pretty much me strutting in the grocery store and glancing over magazine covers.”
I have never watched an episode of any of the Kardashian shows. I do see clips of them mocked on The Soup. Kim Kardashian seems vapid. I’m a little mystified by West & Kardashian as a couple. Like the rest of the world, I try contemplating them while NOT evoking West’s song “Gold digger”. I do have an admiration for Kardashian shaping her porn-driven notoriety into a huge industry over her toddling around in outfits while doing nothing at all of artistic or cultural consequence. She is a lucrative success with a longevity greater than Paris Hilton, who took the same path to less effect. West and Kardashian both have ambition, like the Macbeths, and impressive media savvy. Is that enough to sustain their relationship & parenthood? I won’t pay money for magazines or go beyond my usual trash culture grazing for updates. But when the zeitgeist membrane flicks along a milestone update, I will probably nod and go “Ah!”
As a palate-cleanser, here’s Seth Rogen and James Franco paying homage to Kanye & Kim in their video “Broken 3”:
I loved, loved, LOVED TLC and eagerly watched the CORNY VH-1 docudrama “CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story” that came out this year.
How corny is it? Within 60 seconds T-Boz and Left Eye get signed at LaFace Records, step out from the LaFace building and go to the phone booth where Left Eye calls her dad to share the good news. Left Eye immediately learns that her dad has been shot and killed. The next shot is Left Eye drinking her pain away from a brown paper bag. It starts at the 8:35 mark.
No, really, HOW CORNY IS IT? So corny that Pebbles is setup as the main villain. You know, Pebbles who had the hit with “Mercedes Boy”? She’s married to L.A. Reid, co-owner of LaFace Records and auditioned, formed, then signed TLC and proceeded to pretty much take all their money for the first tens of millions of albums and massive tours. That’s not the corniest part. The corniest part is when she nods in commiseration at T-Boz and Chilli at the funeral for Left Eye. All is forgiven!
The performances are good, the recreations of the videos are really impressive. And if you ever want to see Atlanta Falcons’ Andre Rison wear a HUGE white fur coat while picking up on Left Eye THIS IS YOUR TIME! Your dream = manifested!
The Robin Thicke song-of-the-summer “Blurred Lines” asked, with practiced super-produced fake-spontaneous laugh, “What rhymes with ‘hug me’?”. Let’s give it a whirl…
#Thicke. Get it? It’s a boast, and HIS NAME! Lol.
To start, here’s the clothed video to the song. I’ve linked to the “unrated” version in another post, but don’t want to shock people unfamiliar with the concept that we higher primates are attracted to attractive, naked members of our same species. The key lines at 1:33: “I feel so lucky. / You wanna hug me? / What rhymes with ‘hug me’? / Hey-ey-ey-ey.”
Going straight through the alphabet with single-letter replacements we get:
You wanna bug me. You wanna dug me. You wanna fug me. (“fug”, adjective, a stuffy or malodorous emanation) You wanna jug me. You wanna lug me. You wanna mug me. You wanna pug me. You wanna rug me. You wanna sug me. (“sug”, verb, to Sell Under the Guise of conducting market research) You wanna tug me. You wanna vug me. (“vug”, noun, a cavity in rock with mineral crystals) You wanna zug me. (“Zug”, noun, a German-speaking canton in Switzerland)
Some of these clearly won’t work and/or are bad grammar. Some work marvelously. Other possible choices, especially if sung at a quickened pace to stay within the measure:
You wanna chug-a-lug me. Bella Abzug and me. It’s ‘A Bug’s Life’ we’ll see. This tastes nougat-y.
I’ve got to go catch up on some recorded television, but your suggestions are heartily welcome here!
More ideas:
You wanna thug me. You wanna shrug me. Let’s do The Frug, G. You look like Pugsly. C’mon butt plug me. Butt butt butt butt me.
I rarely like albums on the first listen, but Fiona Apple’s “The Idler Wheel” is my favorite album from last year, and I liked it from the first.
I enjoyed her hit “Criminal”, but was bored by Jon Brion’s production style (foot on piano pedal for echo, pound and hold chord, repeat) and soon tuned her out. I also worried about her, getting a sense that by listening to her songs I was injuring her in some way.
After reading a review I got her album and listened to it on headphones during a long walk. Then listened to it again. An interview Apple gave on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast gave assurance that she was resilient and funny. She puts herself on her sleeve, and actually lets some of it get on you, or lets it fall to the floor with a laugh. But she has tenacity and creativity.
Her video for “Hot Knife” is directed by ex-boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson, an excellent film director (“Boogie Nights”, “There Will Be Blood”) who also keeps knocking up Maya Rudolph. Respect.
I knew Alan Thicke’s kid was a singer. Hadn’t heard any song by him before (or at least connected any song with him). His photo would show up here and there, then his name. I’d think “Ah. Alan Thicke’s kid. Bet that’s a steep climb, or a career boost. Whatever. Looks like a dullard. Like an even-blander Enrique Iglesias.”
This week, I discovered the name of that song I’ve heard 300 times this summer (“Blurred Lines)”, and that it was Alan Thicke singing it. Great production. Not surprised Pharrell is involved. The video is causing a stir, due to the presence of naked female models (let’s all of us clothed primates gasp in horror). Even so, only Pharrell and T.I. come across like the only humans within worth hanging out with. Even better, though, is the parody video. Unfortunately, getting many of the jokes in the parody require seeing the original. Here you go [Not Safe For Work unless you work someplace awesome]:
The funnier, more personality-driven parody by Mod Carousel that swaps the genders:
Bet the group in the parody video had more fun than the pretend-fun in the first video.
Justin Timberlake’s new video for “Tunnel Vision” has a jillion moments of female nudity, boobs with nipples included. YouTube/Google has given it a pass and posted an explicit version, saying: “We make exceptions when [nudity] is presented in an educational,
documentary or artistic context, and take care to add appropriate
warnings and age-restrictions.”
(Video below is probably NSFW, but if it IS Safe For Work where you are I totally want to know more!}
JT: “Though I tore at your clothes and we rehearsed this, I’m going to hide and leave the impression this was your fault, m’kay?” JJ: “Okay.”
Recall that on February 1, 2004 the nation lost its mind (or the media did and CBS had to deal with fines) as we were exposed to a mammary gland from a fellow mammal during the Super Bowl halftime show with Timberlake and Janet Jackson. The top of her bustier was pawed at on the line “I’m gonna have you naked by the end of this song” so some kind of exposure was planned. The “wardrobe malfunction” excuse never, well, covered it.
