In backup to the thesis advanced yesterday about the #1 "Shawty Snappin,'" lyrics to Lil Wayne's version of La Dolce Vita, a paean to Ciara that breaks several of the rules of Rapmanship governing man-woman relations. Witness "Promise" from Drought 3:
Submission of one's will to a woman who is not one's mother
You Can Be My Judge Baby..Yeah I'll Do Life
Willingness to change with a nested presupposition that the speaker is not perfect
I Hear You Want Somebody You Can Call Boo I Will Change My Name To Boo And Fukk Around And Call You [. . .] You Dont Need A Superman..You Just Need A Man Likk Weezy (cf. Jay-Z, "Never Change," The Blueprint, 2001 et. al.)
Willingness to do domestic duties (if you, like me, choose to take this line literally)
What You Know 'bout Having Syrup Poured On That Pancake?
Admission of a trait often perceived as weak, and the ultimate violation, admitting that one is shorter than one's lover
C I Just Want To See If Your R Taller Than Me.
The remaining lyrics include several allusions to hip-hop's reigning couple, Jay-Z and Beyonce, whose "Crazy in Love" tore up the charts mostly due to its point-laden horn line and words that included "I don't care." In "Crazy," Jay-Z talks exclusively about how awesome he is and only mentions "B" as a fixture in the song in which he is rapping. Weezy's main line about being awesome, "and i also got that street credit.. i got more work then any dude.. u .. knew" appears at least partially to show C that Wayne can support her if necessary. Basically he's submitting his resume. When viewed against the backdrop of lady-doth-protest-too-much "Do we love these ho's / NO!" the song illustrates where rappers are in relation to women: Scared, awed, and vulnerable. T-Pain inadvertently acknowledges this power relationship in "Shawty Snappin," but it's no surprise that Lil Wayne has the courage to forthrightly admit it.
I would be surprised if the "Promise" freestyle were ever used successfully as dis-track fodder. It's too real, right?
As promised, the big-time return of the charttopper shebangabang.
As mentioned, "Shawty Snappin'" is the name of the game, the beats have snaps in em (Snap!) and there's more corny jokes to be made about that, riffs about the "timbre" to hash out, but the real issue is not nested in the beats or whether this is a "bangin song" or anything like that. Today we're going to talk about form and content, ideelz and forms, and most important, what R&B shit that appears uninspired and boring can tell us about where rap has really been all along.
Ready? Good! Watch this carefully first (yes an embed that is actually needed):
The whole of this screed hinges on the chorus. T-Pain does a RoboCher thing, sounding more pitched than Anthony Kedis. This is prima facie bad, but the Painster does a lot of catchup work by selling his lines, hinting that the song's boozy club encounter, empty fun that it is, leaves Yung Joc and T-Pain wanting something more, something beyond typical next-day Myspace friendship.
Social networking technology, although not specifically mentioned in the lyrics, plays a key role here, as it represents the encroachment of digital reality on our humanity. For the sake of my argument, it's a good thing T-Pain's voice - so reverbed up that it sounds like it was shitted out the womb of a Fender tweedface amplifier nine months after unprotected sex with Peter Gabriel - has been digitized just enough that one starts to think he might really want to be friends with Shawty. What's more, there's a humanoid desperation behind all that binary-encoded button-pushing on the vocal track that makes a listener want to go Asimov/Radiohead philosophy on the whole thing and wonder if the essence of humanity really is best expressed when reduced to robotic, crass calculation. That is, once we are nearly machines, as T-Pain has nearly become, what makes us truly human will shine through the mechanized perfection and the human soul will finally reveal itself in all its imperfect and insecure glory.
"Shawty Snappin'" points to a reverse of the hippie "friend" who sits up late at night waiting for my neighbor to pass out from too many Blue Moons, then fondles her breasts, contemplates doing a Casper-from-Kids but is too scared and so just peeks at her panties for a minute and does the rest of his business in the sink, Clinton-style (true story). A schmuck like hippie friend pretends human warmth by padding a wristcutter chick's ego with "genuine friendship" then goes roboperv on her the minute she trustingly passes out on the couch. Human on the outside, robot on the inside, contemptible to the core. "What if God was a her?"
, e.g.
Rap is full of gangsters who go to great lengths to make themselves appear, on the exterior, as robotic as possible. Most rappers, except maybe Common, hate that hippie kid and would beat throw him out of baby girl's apartment, wait till morning (when the lady is conscious), then hit it with consent, condoms, and not a little bit of fury. Much better than the true-life hippie scenario; in fact, I hope there's a rapper around the next time I see that dreadlocked groper. Remember the high-tech Shady/Aftermath training facility where 50 Cent ran on a treadmill for the "In the Club" vid? It was no accident; 50 was the king at playing with this "I love you like a fat kid love cake" / "I swear man there's something really wrong with these ho's" dichotomy, trying to come off tougher and more mechanized, but crooning to the ladies to show them that underneath that steel hull there is a warm soul, and the muscles and guns are for your protection, baby. Robot on the outside, human on the inside. Bishop from ALIENS.
Rappers fool us into believing they can't be hurt by anyone, but especially by bitches - even that they hate everyone, especially bitches. Sometimes, though, a man slips up, lets his guard down, and shows his power to love. The more unintentional it is, the more it reveals that all those other lines about "ho's" are really just macho posturing. This is the territory T-Pain hits on especially well in "Shawty Snappin'," because the entire lyrical content has "Let's Get Drunk / Forget What We Did" written all over it. But form doesn't mirror content, and in the hook's anguished whining we get at what might be the little unloved orphan underneath rap's purported "misogyny."
The question worth asking about the whole woman-hating thing is: Which is worse, a passionate man who feels so deeply about his lady that, yeah, sometimes he gets angry and has to say mean things about her, gets frustrated and wants to have promiscuous sex doggie style - or a pervy dude who if he were midaged and white would have a ponytail, who slinks into bed with girls who consent only because he has appeared so harmless so far? Maybe the question is unaswerable given the most objectionable of rap's woman-hating lines (including Cam'ron's too-frequent shit about rape), but at least the passionate angry rapper is honest.
A hip-hopper can transcend Snoop-Dre, hard-edged automaton gangsta "We don't love them ho's" by acting like he can seduce women but with this girl he's really just a lonely (let's not forget poetic) dork who actually always wants to take ladies out on picnics, share deodorant when his runs out, go to Brunch, even go paddleboating sometimes. With the hook to "Shawty Snappin," T-Pain is getting at the club-casualty double-agent romanticism that draws people to R&B-rap collabos and illustrates why they work so well.
I checked up on Billboard with high hopes today, estimating that the Maroon 5 tenure would last no more than a fortnight based on big-time gains by a runaway hip-hop track called "Shawty Snappin' by T-Pain ft Yung Joc.
Unfortunately I am blogging from the quiets of the Tacoma Public Library sans headphones, so an exegesis on the Snappin' phenom will have to wait for another moment By the looks of the muted Youtube vid, though, Pain and Joc are on point; there's fingers thoughtfully pressed to chins, massive bags of money, and honeys with massive bags (fun bags).
So until my travels land me back in the Post-Edison era, I leave you with Youtube's misguided apprehension about my spelling ability:
Yesterday I was going to tell a story about how I threw up at my place of work the night before, but instead I made another appearance on Gawker, which is always nice.
In the meantime, here's a rejected piece from Gawktown, in draft form, didn't make it because it's not super relevant and the thesis about making things happen and calling them trends or going back in history for journalism pieces isn't really as groundbreaking as I thought (I thought it was as groundbreaking as a shovel). Anyway here it is, stripped of hyperlinks and most formatting because, hey, it was rejected: Old is the New New: Big-Time Rags Go Back to the Future
The age-old problem of acting and thinking fast in journalism (known as timeliness) appears to have been resolved this week. Shrewd reporters at respected institutions can now fill column space on Saturdays - which are always razor-thin news-wise - with a new technique I like to call "Mining the Past." The lead spelunkers in the caverns of time are two NYT pieces - one on retrofitting the 21st century with the Summer of Love, the other on lo-fi toys for kids - and a WSJ article about the Beatles changing rock music, like, forever. Get your Deloreans, kids, because we are about to preview tomorrow's articles about things that happened decades ago.
In a newsflash (not breast-flash - regrettably, the article neglects to cover everyone's fave angle on hippies, aka promiscuous and gratuitous nudity/sex) John Leland riffs about how hippies are aging and the Summer of Love happened forty years ago this June.
The word-count function must've been broken, because the piece goes on at length, including some pomo theorizing about the Summer of Love as a brand, the lost idealism of the era, and of course the parallel between Vietnam and Iraq.
If only we had truly been granted the article's presupposed reprieve from wasteful suburban teeners playing acoustic guitar and skeezily trying to grope on girls passed out from too much grass. Tune in to the Times next week for a piece about how people are doing cocaine, listening to hard rock, and going out to dance clubs; the 70s are happening again. They could interview me about it, I'm an expert.
Meanwhile, over in the toy department, some kids are playing with balls again (no homo). Alex Williams talks time travel, and the picture is one of a grim struggle for vintage clean fun; kids have gotten so Nintendoed that they have to learn playground games by watching their immature parents indulge in some juvenile nostalgia:
"Larry Betz, of Benton, Ark., founder of the Little Rock Kickball Association, said that his adult league was an instant hit when it started in 2004. Meanwhile, most of their children found this old playground staple as foreign as a mortgage application. "The irony of adults playing a kids' game was lost on them," Mr. Betz said.
But after spending a few seasons on the sideline, watching their parents have fun, many children are suddenly showing interest in the game, Mr. Betz said. This year, he expects at least 150 children to turn out for a new youth division."
Dr. Geoffrey Godbey, a professor of recreation at Penn State University, said the idea that parents can revive old-fashioned play is contrary to the spirit of play. He blamed "boomers who want to do it themselves again because they never grew up."
The fogies aren't going to get unstuck in time that easily, though. Or at least Russ Smith at the WSJ won't help them by reviewing an album that was released before cassettes. Apparently, Sgt. Pepper was "a triumph of packaging."
Gotta run; cooking up some pitches for the bigwigs at the major papers. Thinking aloud here, but maybe a cultural piece on long hair and blue jeans, something about a new board game called "checkers," and a review of some hot wax by this hipshaking new hunkachunka named Presley. Should be working for the Times by next week (aka forty years ago).
Am I the last guy to get in on this shit? Don't matter...
Chapter 1 - The Stall and the Failed Result
So I pumped the lil sis for some info on what the flatland college demographic is pumping through their speakers, and she mentioned a lil' big chick named Amy Winehouse.
I actually heard of the 'House from a Riff Market (can't link to duke, don't know him like that) post a while back but it was mostly a jigajag about how there is a Lily Allen-Amy Winehouse axis in which the Winehouse gives better than the Allen gets.
Needless to say, reading breathless blog posts about the latest singles choppers does little to expand one's chops, so a quick perusal of YouTube's "Rehab" low-res made me realize that I'd been listening to this full-voiced, horn-infused retrocool for a couple weeks on XM Cafe in the tavern. The tune is remarkable mainly because there isn't a lot of jazz - jazz as in music writ large - out there (if we bar former American Idol contestants and late-nineties holdovers like Xtina) that showcases some chicas with mad notes in their lungs and not some child-like coyness (see below) or country-fried reediness (Neko Case - where is she these days?).
In short, the song was alright but didn't necessitate a blog post (don't ask me what actually does - it's not knowable, all about feel, the groove, ease).
So all went blanks for a while, and I even had saved a draft on Blogger that was titled Amy Winehouse and that had no text in the body. On one particularly hard-up-for-content day I even thought I would do a joke about how many bloggers have a draft saved on their accounts with the title "Amy Winehouse" and no text in the text box. But now I don't have to, because Jay-Z spit a verse over "Rehab." Which brings us to . . .
Chapter 2 - Grizzled Minor Leaguers Show the New Talent How to Keep a Streak
A rap remix of a pop tune ain't really new. Think "mashups" and whatever. But the thing about Winehouse that's really appealing is that she sounds old-school with a draggy groove and lets the timbre of her voice do the talking. Think about it - the main lyric that attracts you to it, that worms its way into your skull is "No, no, no." Which let's just say isn't exactly David Antin / Susan Howe - level of academic achievement. Of course it's still brilliant in its minimalist directness, but the point is that "Rehab" is a 21st-century song from after 1980 that can be sampled by rappers without a "mashup" novelty button tacked on and without any P-Diddy-at-the-helm "too easy" controversy. That is, "Rehab" goes with rap the way James Brown and Ornette Coleman do - with pounds of style and ounces of soul in the remainder column.
In that respect, putting Jay on "Rehab" appears obvious even to the point that one wonders if "Rehab" was the teaser for the remix, but honestly hearing Winehouse on XM Cafe threw me enough that I wouldn't have thought of it myself. Whoever's responsible (Was it Amy? Was it Jay? Do they get together over coffee and talk this kind of thing over?), the track is nicely pressed for all its apparent blasitude. Not a club banger, not even a hot verse, but it's nice to see that there are still places that producers can go for stuff that just sounds like hip hop from the moment the ball hits the bat.
Chapter 3: Bring it Home
As any Mariners fan will tell ex-Brewer Richie Sexson (Batting Average < .200), you don't always gotta swing for the fences to make a great play; sometimes a hit will suffice. If the trend continues, 40 will soon be the new 30. In the upcoming dry-spell, you're gonna have to show a few wrinkles and shorten up the swing.
What "Rehab" illustrates perfectly is this: The "Show Me What You Got" Budweiser commercials during Sunday football games were necessary for Jay-Z's survival, even if he didn't know it then. A shortened song means shortened swings means more solid hits; "Show Me What You Got" is fire when it's a minute long and there's beer involved. When you're not in the coke game anymore, you got to get into people's living rooms the way John Cougar Mellencamp does it. Trying to gloss over your age with "still fly" garbage is a mistake. People will shoo their toddlers out of the way.
What we have here is rap's answer to adult contemporary. I'm picturing Norah Jones collabo's, maybe even some Wynton Marsalis shit. Yeah W's arrogant but I mean it's Jay-Z we're talking about here. Remember Erykah Badu? Yeah me too.
Summer's coming, and the babysitter will soon be rolling the kids (yeah if we're in the new Jay-Z demographic we're gonna have to have kids - sorry ladies) to little league for the day. New parents will have the house to themselves for once, and you know what that means ;). After a rough week at the office it'll be a godsend to throw in some "Rehab," and bring sultry back. It's time to pour ourselves some iced tea get our swing on. Let's get a little loungy, a little hot, a little sweaty.
Jay's just the messenger, let's not sacrifice him just cause he's the first one to come to terms with his age. Remember, we're all gonna get there eventually. It's only bad if you're afraid of it. Buy no rogaine and listen to more Amy Winehouse. Monogamy is not so bad.
Elissa Steamer's part from Bootleg 3000. Note the indie nosepick back over to three-flip at about 1:23, one of the coolest lines I've seen.
The connection between skateboarding and a traditional sport like figure skating is worth exploring. Both involve judged competition in which speed and brute strength are not the sole criteria for success (X-Games:Olympics). Both center around movement as an end rather than a means, (rotation, aerial maneuvers, keeping one's balance as opposed to "getting a first down"). Decisions regarding who is the best skater (in either sport) are highly subjective. This raises several questions.
? # 1
Figure skating is one of the few sports in which women and men appear to have achieved parity (in terms of popularity and respect). Given similar criteria for success, why hasn't women's skateboarding taken off? Will it later? It's possible; according to Wikipedia's history of figure skating, International Skating Union competitions didn't include women until 1902, a decade after the organization was founded. When Madge Syers finished second in one such competition, women were quickly banned from competing with men, and a ladies' event was established four years later. It's been a long, hard battle for equality ever since, and even if the men's and women's competitions are about equal in popularity (according to my assumption), there's still a big old sexist discourse about the women's outfits being pretty and male figure skaters being fem, the comps themselves remain segregated, etc.
It is likely that skateboarding started out gendered; streets are dirty (masculine), and a fall on concrete means getting scrapes, whereas a fall on smooth ice does not yield such blemishes (thanks to indoor rinks and perfectly zamboni'd ice, plus a general acceptance of falling on ice as "not that bad" i.e. feminine). As such, street skating doesn't conform with many gender norms about girls, but ice skating has recently contorted itself to do just that (think tutus and leotards versus jeans and t-shirts). If it is the case that skateboarding started as a gendered activity, it is amazing how quickly it has been cemented as such.
? # 2
Why don't figure skaters perform on icy "street courses" or vert ramps like skateboarders? A double axel is basically a 900, arguably the most famous trick in the history of vert (the ollie is up there too, but let's not split hairs / parse follicles). Skates on ice probably have a lower friction coefficient than ball bearings on casings, so ice skaters would definitely get pretty gnar on a ramp pretty quickly.
And in a double-reverse-side-of-the-coin closer, I would also love to see skateboarders of all genders start wearing sequined outfits in competition and also during regular street sessions. If it will help women fight for their right to hard-charge and barrier-barge, I'm all for it.
Jerry Falwell died. Is this funny? Would it be 'funny' if not "funny" if he'd died in the 9/11 attacks? That wasn't a joke. This is making me uncomfortable.
To sum up, from Gchat with a friend in a prominent news organization:
me: jerry falwell died weird Sent at 10:59 AM on Tuesday friend: i know things are crazy around here me: i bet i'm sure you're very busy
Gawker celebrated. Is this just a necessary part of being journalism affiliated and having certain views (namely that some people deserve to die)?
It is possible that today a man died and a large portion of the media said "Too bad journalistic ethics forbids making a story happen, or I would've had a big scoop a long time ago."
Cake Bake Betty appeared to Water and Vegetables compadre Puffy Shoe via some Bloglines Vlog trolling and he sent me a one-liner email containing only some http, namely the http that reads http://www.unitedvloggers.com/2007/04/26/64-little-white-things/.
Lyrically, the chick resembles a cross between stream-of-convo undergrad poetry workshop kids who just read howl and are mad excited that DISJUNCTIVE IMAGES GO TOGETHER IN INTERESTING WAYS and Craig Finn from The Hold Steady when he's big-upping Rhymesayers.
Example of the former, from the "Bio/Love" (I know I know stay with me) section of her homepage:
She hears, upon that water without sou[n]d, A voice that cries: "The tomb in Palestine, Is not the porch of spirits lingering; It is the grave of Jesus, where He lay." We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable.
Pretty Elizabeth Bishop, right? But don't worry it gets better (although it doesn't have to by much because Bishop:poetry contests::Eminem:Rap Olympics); all of this is tempered by some Big Daddy Kane shit, but instead of "birthday" with "first place" it's "ate me," "hate me" and "tasty." Elementary by rap syllable standards, maybe, but the thing is the chick is singing in a Lil' Orphan Annie style, which brings up a new contention [of mine] that if diction-wise everyone just tried to sing like rappers and/or Craig Finn, I'd be a lot more up on a lot of the melodic, sparse, hip, grip-and-rip soft rock going down the YouTubes of late.
A friend of mine whom I retain on my buddy list but with whom I rarely actually communicate has taken to placing song lyrics in his away messages. However, rather than leaving the quotes out of context as a sort of clue for friends/crushes about his emotional state, my friend explicitly uses these quotations to test his buddies' musical knowledge.
For example, from the current away message: lyrics game #5. name artist/song. "Y'all be frontin. Me give my heart to a woman. Not for nothin' never happen' I'll be forever mackin'. If one can simply Google these lyrics, thereby reverse-engineering the song title, then this isn't really a test of one's musical knowledge as much as it is a test of one's desire to know/free time (or, perhaps, one's desire to communicate with my friend). In this way, it would seem the internet has functioned as something of a great equalizer for people seeking expertise on any kind of information that is easily organized, categorized, and Google searchable.
I'm hoping we are reaching a moment when expertise in subjective aesthetic fields becomes so diffuse that no one really listens to anyone's opinion anymore, because there are no more experts and there is no more credibility/objectivity, and music journalism becomes what it is first and foremost - a place for talented and funny writers to make puns and share anecdotes.
I once read a review of a middle-of-the-road skate video in Thrasher where the reviewer conjectured that the measure of a good skate video is whether or not it makes the viewer want to go out and skate. The measure of a good piece of writing, journalistic or not, might be whether it sparks further interest in the topic at hand, regardless to its truthfulness or integrity, terms that, in a sea of readily accessible information exposing lies and plagiarism for what they are, are quickly losing relevance.
I've been wanting to do something about NOFX, specifically about "Linoleum," a perfect little bit of wankery that lasts only as long as it should. During my research on the subject, I came across the YouTube top search result for NOFX, which happily is a rendition of "Linoleum" for a festival called the Bizarre Festival:
Perhaps as important as the performance itself is the typical Fat Mike asshole Tracy Bonham joke at the beginning. I remember loving "Mother Mother" when I was thirteen, during the years of Weezer, when Nirvana videos were still all over MTV and it wasn't quite certain that the earthquake was really over and these were just aftershocks.
It appears at first that Fat Mike's joke at her expense has been nothing short of devastating - as we never got served an obvious "Mother Mother" sequel ("Daughter Daughter"), and Bonham had joined the Blue Man Group by 2003 - an act known to insiders as "Going Blue, big time."
Fortunately, going blue big time isn't as bad for you musically as you might think, especially if you only go blue small time. If the collaboration yields soft-quiet-soft on a throaty chromatic-sounding percussion track (must be those big plastic pipes the Blue Men use) with big bang electric choruses pending in the background. Tracy ("Tracky" to her friends) still sings like an unhinged teenager with a trust fund and a drinking problem who hits on you in a bar then tells you you're disgusting. I could see someone like Mark Appleyard skating to this (hey, he skated to "Sucker Love" in Menikmati). That, and Apples kind of looks like a guy who would skate to a Blue Man Group song while dressed in blue latex, catching marshmallows in his mouth while he nollie flips the Leap of Faith. It could be metrosexual, or it could be gnarly. Apples has always walked that line, and for good reason. If he didn't, I probably couldn't admit to liking Placebo. Or Tracy Bonham:
Steve Carrell (or his writers) has (or have) a habit of developing his characters by implying that they enjoy certain forms of entertainment.
In The 40 Year Old Virgin, Carrell sees the Ultrasound of his friend's child and asks, "Is this the movie about babies that are geniuses?" The reference is to Baby Geniuses, recognized among film reviewers as a movie without a conceivable audience. The joke works on three levels, at least. First, the rephrasing, "Babies that are geniuses," is funny because one would expect someone who knew that much about the movie could also remember its obvious title. Second, confusing an ultrasound with a movie about babies is funny. Third, the movie is sufficiently bad that one would not expect it to be shown to a group of adults.
This final reason appears in similar iterations on NBC's The Office. The joke has a pretty simple structure. Someone mentions the idea of doing something funny, and Carrell or another buffoon mentions an example of something they consider funny but that is actually quite corny. From my foggy memory, the example ran something like:
Jim: We're talking about something funny. Dwight: Oh, you mean like Dave Barry?
Steve Carrell himself delivers a similar example in another episode.
Jim: We're going to do something funny. Michael: Oh, you mean like the Jamie Kennedy Experiment?
These jokes appear to function purely on the premise that the comedy discussed is not actually funny, and the characters are fools for thinking otherwise.
In another way, the jokes imply a set of preferences held by the writers of the show and presumably shared with its audience. It's the old business about allusions flattering the audience.
The joke doesn't work (yet) with shows or performances that are widely acclaimed. It might be funny, however, if a character on the American Office made a joke about the British version. This kind of dialog could actually function to reinforce the idea that Jim, Pam, and the gang actually inhabit a real office in the same world that we live in, and go home to watch a show about the annoyances of office life. Or we could wait until the sarcasm of liking bad jokes becomes the reverse sarcasm of liking good ones.
Tacoma Water recently mailed me an advertisement titled "Drinking water - and people - you can count on." I found this quite hilarious for the (perhaps) obvious reason that, at first glance, Tacoma Water appears to suggest that one drink people in addition to water. Furthermore, the wisdom of drinking the very people one "can count on" should evidently be questioned.
Typographically, there ought to be a way to more accurately convey the intended message ("Tacoma Water provides reliable drinking water by employing reliable people").
When copyediters are in short supply, the o-dash, (actually, according to em- and en- convention it should be spelled oh-), immediately conveys the idea that "I'm splitting up this phrase in an awkward - perhaps even hilarious - way, but you know what I really mean - business." Start using it, Tacoma Water.
From the body of the document:
Brown Water: This is often caused by disturbances to the main, such as main breaks or fire hydrant use, that stir up the sediment that has settled at the bottom of the main. While it may look unsafe, the sediment is harmless river silt particles from our unfiltered water supply. If you experience this problem, avoid using any water for two hours. If the water does not clear, call Tacoma Water. If brown or yellow water occurs frequently, it may be caused by corrosion in you home plumbing.
There appears to me to be a contract surrounding facebook profiles. That is, "Do not change your profile too often." For some reason a mutable profile conveys instability and insecurity, and I've even witnessed a wall post hating on someone for always having "updated recently" (this was back in the days of "Profile Updated Recently," pre-news feed [news feed kind of a 9/11 for facebook in terms of turning point, community not really knowing what to do with new communication structures, etc.]).
Anyway, it strikes me that part of the wonder of facebook is its mutability and frivolity. The real reason for the outcry over the news feed was its potential to convey damaging or semi-private information to people who are not frivolous--that is, people who are employers, or worse, people who do not have facebook profiles.
I propose a new facebook-blog mashup wherein people feel at liberty to change their profiles without fear of sanction, where people can lose interest in reading, cease participating in the activity of "sleep," and remove Coldplay from their favorite music category without fear of repercussions. In short, I would like to see a facebook that is exclusively a joke on facebook and makes no effort at sincere communication of the lasting and integral parts of any given person's personality. Either that, or I would like everyone to start liveblogging their identities in the language of facebook profiles, continually updating with cleverness and humor the minutest details of their favorite movies, their complications, their about thems.
In the Tomorrow Zone, no one is afraid to change themselves.
A comparison occurs to me as I listen to "Makes Me Wonder," the doughy flapjack Maroon 5 have served all the way up to the top of the stack of foodstuffs that is the Billboard Hot 100.
Maroon 5 : Disappointment :: Babylon 5 : Dilgar.
That is, Maroon 5 the band is as full of an aggressive species of disappointment determined to spread throughout the universe as Babylon 5 the TV show is full of Dilgar, the aggressive species of alien determined to spread through the universe.
The song starts off with 1 (one) quirky bass line filtered through what sounds like a Boss SBY-3 Bass Synthesizer pedal. Just when I'm starting to rock back and forth in the comfortable chair next to the pillar in the Tacoma Public Library (the only place where I can plug in my laptop), Adam Levine comes in with a scratchy whine. He repeats the same word (anymore) several times, and whatever boner I was developing over this song booked a direct flight to Droopsville.
What I mean to say, of course, is that Maroon 5 pack no surprises. If it were my fifth birthday and I invited Maroon 5 to my party, they'd give me a Maroon 5 CD. And from then on I would not invite them over to my house for apples and peanut butter.
On the bright side, I left the headphones in while trying to figure out something to say about "Makes Me Wonder" (not much obvi). The following playlist, generated by Yahoo! Launch's randomizer algorithms, ensued:
"Never Again" - Kelly Clarkson (even after Breakaway, the girl has still got a mad set of pipes). I wish I were attracted to Kelly Clarkson. She's kind of like the girl in high school who asks you to the dance and keep thinking while you're slowdancing about the girl who you always mention among your friends by both first and last name ("Jane Galloway is so hot!") In other words, Kelly Clarkson should be known just as Kelly. But "I hope when you're in bed with her / You think of me!" is a great set of lines.
"Grace Kelly: Who's Next" - Mika. [I can't find this on YouTube but I'm sure it exists elsewhere, sorry I'm not in the business of tracking things down.] Mika does a deec Freddy Mercury impression, which of course is what we've needed since The Darkness disappeared (where are you Darkness? I miss y'all.) If the video'd had purple aliens and Mika had toweled himself off with them we might've had a new "I Believe in a Thing Called Love." But he didn't, so we don't. One thumb up.
"I Don't Need a Man" - Pussycat Dolls. This is not "Loosen Up My Buttons" but it doesn't need to be. I was mostly writing the last paragraph while this song was playing so I don't have any objections.
"Since U Been Gone" - Kelly. Straight fire since day one, always has been. I will never be disappointed that this song is playing, least of all when I happen to already be dancing.
If I can thank Maroon 5 for anything at all, it is that I only had to wait a couple minutes through "Makes Me Wonder" to get at some toons worth grooving to. But back to the rotation.
HAHAHAHA LIVE VERSION OF "GIRLFRIEND" BY AVRIL LAVIGNE. She has two backup singers to help her shout "hey hey you you."
"Hey Avril." "Yeah?" "'Girlfriend' isn't Number One anymore." "Oh no! What happened?" "Maroon 5." "Maroon 5?" "Maroon 5." "Shit." "Avril? Avril? Stop crying. Maybe people just got confused. If you read 'Adam Levine' carelessly, it kind of looks like 'Avril Lavigne.' And he is pretty. People just got confused." "I am going to kill that motherfucker Adam Levine."
Okay I have to admit I totally blew it on a post a couple days ago about Christian skaters by not really dealing with the videos themselves, so caught up was I in an "aw shucks" preoccupation with surface contradictions that don't really hold up against scrutiny noways. The Music
First off, it's difficult to deny the simple pleasure of listening to the music that plays in the background as Matt Beach and Chad Timtim gently shred the streets of America. Matt Beach's song is called "The Crayon Box Song" and was written by William V. Mason. This tune, gentle in its explanation of why Jesus is awesome, serves a striking contrast to music played in most skate videos (punk, rap). Although I love listening to metal while dudes like Dustin Dollin charge down inhumane numbers of stairs, Mason's little ditty about colors and Jesus more effectively captures the serenity that accompanies the best days of skating. Out in the sun, landing that flatland kickflip, just manualing across a pad, not stressing, just feeling the board under your feet.
The effect of the music on this viewing experience is hard to overestimate. It would be an interesting experiment to remix these videos with aggressive music to see if the serene skating still shone through.
The Style
Beyond the radness of the music, which for some reason I find it hard to admit, the skating itself appears informed by the holy spirit. These cats are skating for God, and damned if they haven't achieved some sort of spiritual calm on their boards. When Matt Beach falls, he doesn't swear; he says he feels like he got in a "motorcycle accident," then chuckles nervously. The unselfconscious sincerity of the declaration makes the skating appear all the more free and natural.
It's tough in today's skateboarding market to find pros who aren't straining at the bit to land the gnarliest trick out there, to one-up their competition by grinding a rail one stair longer. Say what you will about the lameness of believing in God, it sure helps these dudes' skating.
Slavoj Zizek takes a minute to dispel the mythical uproar surrounding the 300 film, reviewed by myself a matter of weeks ago. In his review, Zizek points out that the Spartans were the militarily inferior of the two fighting forces and, for this and other reasons, bear closer resemblance to Iran and Iraq than to the U.S.
Fine, fine. But this counter-reading brings up an interesting point about the assumptions people have brought to the film. What about the movie makes it appear to many journalists as a piece of American propaganda? Zizek doesn't go there, but maybe the answer is that Americans have so greatly internalized discussions of civilizational conflict that they believe Spartan society do be the ancestor of Westernism/Americanism and Xerxes' Persians to be the antecedents to some sort of Mid-Eastern bloc opposed to U.S. interests. One fears that Zizek himself may have fallen into the same trap by taking and legitimizing a view that, though it directly opposes much criticism heaved at the film, is trapped within the same dialectic. It is not really so important for 300's viewers to ask "Okay, who are the Americans? Who are the Iranians?" as it is to engage the many possible meanings of the film, be they relevant (or irrelevant) to America's and Iran's problems.
Perhaps Samuel Huntington casts so long a shadow that it dims the sight of America's best and brightest--that is, its film reviewers. This entire debate about 300's propagandizing, which has captured even Zizek to a small degree, might be more easily laid aside if one takes Amartya Sen's view of the condition of current global politics. From Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (which, not coincidentally, I just finished reading):
A uniquely divisive view goes not only against the old-fashioned belief that all human beings are much the same but also against the less discussed but more plausible understanding that we are diversely different. The world is frequently taken to be a collection of religions (or of "civilizations" or "cultures"), ignoring the other identities that people have and value, involving class, gender, profession, language, science, morals, and politics.
Despite the simplicity of Sen's idea (the entire book is largely devoted to fleshing out and illustrating the above-stated thesis), its reach is quite large. One might have a lot more to learn about 300 (someone should do a remake titled Three-Hundred) if he or she could take a less reductive view of the film and engage it along lines that don't merely address the civilizational argument. It appears clear to everyone that there are none-too-subtle overtones in 300, but there exists profound disagreement about what the movie actually means a posteriori.
It could be that 300's shocking, unclear message resembles the garbled language of terrorism. By spreading an aggressive, deeply cryptic message nestled in visceral terror and violence, the film provokes, even among the intellectual elite, a blustering and confused reversion to ideas that appear sound and comforting, in this case Samuel Huntington's Clash. More disturbing yet is the notion that real terrorist acts of the twenty-first century have done little to disengage the media from the civilizational debate, even over the subject of something so comparatively trivial as a fictional action movie based on a comic book.
Finally and tangentially, k-punk's jargon-laden, hard-to-follow backlash against Zizek. The dude is too old! He's sloppy! Maybe I took my tact because I didn't get this. Anyway both k-punk and I at least agree that Slavoj is missing the boat.
I mentioned before that there was a fast-growing contingent of skaters in the U.S. who are probably just as mad that ESPN took the Christ out of the X-Games as they are that whoever it was took the Christ out of X-Mas.
Skaters and Jesus go back at least to the late '80s, when Mark Gator Rogowski converted to Christianity shortly before being convicted of the murder of Jessica Bergsten. However, whereas the Gator version of Christianity was seen as an insane move by an unstable man, current Christian skaters seem very well-adjusted, and some, including Chad Timtim and Jamie Thomas, are among the most successful in the sport.
For your viewing pleasure I give you Matt Beach's part from Kaleidoscope, a film centered strictly and exclusively on professional skateboarders who walk in the light of the lamb.
Note the force of conviction behind the closing monologue, as well as the references to the lecherous lifestyle that claimed many of the dude's friends. Note also that the skating is on par with most of the stuff you'll see on this blog in terms of creativity and smoothness.
Anyone who saw the eight-year-old blonde girl dancing to Christian metal in Jesus Camp knows that we live in an age where evangelical Christianity is willing to branch out into hip subcultures in an effort at rescuing more souls from Satan's grasp. It's therefore not much of a surprise or a shock that skating has its share of believers. Still, there exists some apparent contradiction between the often reactionary mores of Christianity and the devil-may-care (or even I-like-the-devi), punk attitude that characterizes much of skateboarding:
Thrasher Magazine Zoo Ministries
From 777 Skateboards' Web site:
What does “777” stand for? In the Bible, the number 7 stands for completion and perfection- 777 is the alternative to 666- and you don’t need to be a Christian to know what that stands for. If you are tired of skulls and crossbones, violent “cartoons” and messages of death- if you are looking for something different- check out what we have to offer.
Notice the up-front presentation of coolness as uncool and vice versa. The style is somewhat reminiscent of straight-edge (that is, convictions--and not just shocking lifestyles--are the true currency of cool).
The attitude is much less confrontational with skatepunk ideology than it seems on the surface. The smoothness with which these videos carry over is abetted greatly by the ease with which one can get over atheistic hoitytoit and just enjoy watching these guys rip it. In fact, the similarities between these guys and other pros far overshadow the differences, in terms of both interest and scope. The way Kaleidoscope's skaters talk about Jesus is very similar to the way most skaters talk about skating. And they rip just as hard. Chad Timtim:
Stoked, the documentary about Gator's rise and fall
Got a lot of sleeping to do today so before the logsawing session begins I thought I'd at least do some blogsawing and break off a little Google Chat 'twixt everyone's favorite 1LT (who, due to paranoia, will appear as 1LT and truly yours (who, due to Google Chat convention, will appear as me) re Memorial Day (not pictured), Vegas, Lupe Fiasco, Entourage, and Pat Dollard.
me: got any blog ideas? 1LT: word. yes me: yes? 1LT: yes i do let me formulate me: you could even do a guest blog post if you'd like 1LT: haha
[Ed: Guest blogging still laughable among military types] [. . .]
1LT: have you heard lupe fiasco's album yet? me: no man but i saw the video where a toy robot comes to life 1LT: you will love this album he's a native'tongue esqe hip hopper who also enjoys skateboarding me: yes i heard of him a year ago perhaps he had a song called "kick push" which was okay but just okay for me i admit he's got flows though 1LT: kick push is alright hurts me soul and american terrorist are amazing me: ah okay i'm checkin the youtube right now
[Ed: Hurts me soul is amazing, in fact here it is embedded]
[Ed: Check out his moves!]
1LT: one more vegas selling point, if you come, we'll have our fifth for the Entourage vegas episode re-do you can be eric or turtle me: haha is eric the samwise gamgee guy? aka rudy? 1LT: hahaha yeah me: haha okay who's the other guy 1LT: the dude who wears jerses ys me: oh ok that works i wear jerseys sometimes
[. . .]
okay i'm going to blog a fraction of this conversation 1LT: fair me: what is your mil rank? 1LT: 1LT me: 1LT? ok 1LT: first lieutenant me: yeah but at least i can hear the audio man he's just saying what white people do 1LT: yes, i believe indicating who the american terrorist is and has been me: ah oh btw did you ever check out patdollard.com? 1LT: wow now, i will now
[. . .]
me: are you seeing that patdollard shit? 1LT: right now me: thoughts? 1LT: [. . .] who the hell is this guy me: he's a former hollywood talent agent actually has been compared in VF to Ari Gold of Entourage Gould? 1LT: woooow me: anyway dollard got an embed position w/ marines and made this wacked out movie that is supposed to be the anti-farenheit 9/11
Although 1LT gave his two cents on the Dollard issue, you won't get more than this from me: "he is an instigator and a preventor of peace/a real douche." The stream-of-consciousness upshot from all this is conscious rap is still about (what to make of this, and Chris Rock, a little later in the week), Pat Dollard is obvi an American Terrorist who hurts me soul, and the bathwater complaints about Sean Hannity need to stop because it's just a silly game to all of them.
Wu-Tang is giving away 250 songs from the 2003-2005 era. This of course illustrates how prolific the Clan is, but what is the reason for this sudden generosity? A post about the songs themselves when I have time. Mostly just wanted to use that pic, though.
I suppose it's a bit unclear what we were to expect from the reunion of Rage Against the Machine for the 2007 Coachella festival in Indio, CA. Sure, they would probably be loud and raucous and political. But Rage are primarily a band borne of early-to-mid-nineties anxieties about race, equality, feminism, and globalization. For some reason, their iconography--Free Mumia, Che Guevara, Malcolm X--seems quaint now that the world really is much flatter and Ralph Nader has fallen from top-ten to not mentioned at all (did I take him seriously because I was eighteen, or was 2000 really that much more idyllic and naive than 2007?). So the question isn't really even "Do we need Rage now more than ever?" so much as "Should we feel sad that we don't need Rage?" or even "Should Rage feel sad?" and "If not now, then when?"
Witness this Reuters Canada report of the band's onstage conduct:
The front man addressed the crowd only once between songs, when he likened the current U.S. administration to Nazi war criminals. "They should be shot as any war criminal should be," he said.
Not exactly incendiary, and judging by the only audiovisiuals from their set currently available to me (cell-phone cams, YouTube), RATM look a little worse for wear, despite the fact that the Empire is probably more Evil now than it was when they broke up seven years ago. It could just be the technological limitations of the recording devices, but Tom Morello looks a little like he's standing still, and Zach de la Rocha sounds a little like he's trying to rap along to his own lyrics. After a couple minutes' thought, it seems it would've been hard to experience anything at this reunion other than pitying sadness and nauseated nostalgia.
Just as a cartoon vase shatters on the head of a cartoon cat, so does cartoon punk Avril Levigne shatter the Billboard charts; the preteen demographic's favorite skater chick has hit Number One.
"Girlfriend," the single in question, rides a lot harder on the effervescent, uptempo aesthetics of producer pop (hand claps, shouty chorus) than on the sulky, vaguely annoying histrionics of adolescence (orchestras, tonsil-baring whole-note laden chorus). That is, "Girlfriend"—-more heavily influenced by Kidz Bop than Linkin Park --exhibits Lavigne reveling in her corporate pop power, having abandoned all angsty teen alternative inhibitions. Whether those inhibitions were ever real is hardly the issue now, as listeners are confronted with a monster they helped create.
For, as much as "Sk8r Boi" and "Girlfriend" share a poppy-go-lucky musical vision--"Sk8r" with its bouncy guitars and "Girlfriend" with its Go-Gos singalong jump-right-to-the-chorus intro, they're fairly exactly narrate the same story from diametrically opposed perspectives; "Sk8r" plays as an anthem to the sexually powerless, "Girlfriend" a paean to the third-wave slut in all of us.
During the bridge to "Sk8r Boi," a more innocent Avril looks back, now happily going steady with her "superstar" boyfriend, whom she had the vision to see was more than just a stoned high-school loser. Meanwhile, her ballet-performing foil who, due to peer pressure, initially spurned the Boi in question has to stand in the crowd at his punk show, nervously biting her nails and kicking herself for her lack of vision.
"Sk8r Boi" shows Avril the vengeful loser, awkwardly paying her dues during conformist high-school years only to win out "five years from now."
Three lines, however, largely unnoticed in 2002, betray Avril's sadism and serve, in hindsight, as a warning of things to come:
five years from now, she sits at home feeding the baby she's all alone
The girl who "took ballet" is now a single mother, scarcely out of teenhood, with no one to help her. And we're supposed to feel good about that because Avril wound up getting the boy. But wait, it gets worse.
In 2007, Avril certainly has a lot more chutzpah than she did when we first heard from her. It appears the post-high-school Avril character of "Girlfriend" has learned the power of her own sexuality, and unlike the largely passive persona in "Sk8r Boi," is now turning outward to pursue new conquests. And, as the video shows, she's willing to trollop it up to pillage as many taken men as she can:
Note self-satisfied lines like "I'm the motherfucking princess," not to mention baby girl's bleached-blonde hair extensions. Gone is the green t-shirt, forever lost is the loose necktie of 2002. Enter Avril of womanhood, with blue short shorts and an uncomfortable penchant for mugging the camera a bit too aggressively.
It's a familiar arc. A girl goes through high school with shattered self-esteem and a love for Blink-182. The years are hellish and drag on. Soon, however, she graduates (or drops out), loses her cherry, starts going to bars, and witnesses with her own eyes the manipulative power of heterofemale sexuality. Five years on, the endearing frustration that made everyone root for her in the beginning has hardened into a callous, insatiable desire to possess and dominate any boy/man she sets her sights on.
Avril's image has always been a little hard to stomach. Her schtick, designed to go after the preteen ladies who hate themselves some Britney but still need some slick studio pop to groove to, has been so transparent as to come off as pomo parody. But there was reason to like the anthemic "Sk8r Boi"; it gave play to the pimply skateboarder fantasy that one day it would be possible have a hot girlfriend who loved watching them try varial heelflips. Now Avril's all about spreading that pootie wherever it'll go, and following it around just isn't as appealing as it was back in the day. She's slept with too many skaters.
[By the way, today I'm doing my best to Write Like a Skate Magazine, that is, quite informally and often with a loosely constructed, sloppy style that may or may not appeal to readers over the age of twelve.] Alright, alright I'm going to admit it. I thought I was going to have a hard time blogging today, partly because I slept all through the sunlight, and the Internet just didn't seem as enthralling as usual. But then I trucked over to Skateboardermag and found an entire skate team I had never even heard of until today! Here's the vid, as lengthy as it is strengthy. It's so gnarly that it's even eating my blogroll, but that's not gonna stop my from EMBEDDING IT DEEP IN THIS THING ANYWAY.
Notice how often these guys skate in cement parks, revert, and powerslide. Even though the tricks aren't hyper-gnarly in terms of length-of-handrails (there might not even be any handrails in the vid, I don't remember), the tricks are creative and kind of tossed of in a manner that says "We just went to the park this weekend and brought a camera." Which is the best way to film a video.
Pretty much everything about Bacon Skateboards appears designed to appeal, but can't be, since most of it is happenstance. Here's a list of awesome things about Bacon:
-Regional Gem status (the Macalester of skateboarding? No, the Reed of skateboarding i.e. based in Portland); -Team members named, ridiculously, like NFL quarterbacks: Benji Galloway, Lincoln Nass, Johnny Turgeson, Oudalay Philavanh, Mason Huggins (okay maybe not all of them), and Donovan Rice; -Web site basically just a Blogspot page, making Bacon basically a bunch of bloggers; -Web site logo features unholy combination of pig and porn star, laying on side with come-hither stare, HUGE rack of eight fake silicone breasts; -Graphics that look like this. -Myspace slogan: "Bacon Tits."
Finally, I have to leave some space on this blog to address the music selection. The Myspace page has a metal song titled "Annihilation of the Nile." The songs selected for the Cuntry as Fuck video shown above include, as you have noticed, "Standing Ovation" by Young Jeezy and "Polar Opposites" by Modest Mouse. The third song is about "Beer and bacon for my friends," and rules just as hard but I can't seem to find it by Googling the lyrics.
This post, like many skateboard mag articles, walks the crumbling mountain summit of skaterag journalism, teetering on the brink of death with actual coverage of a topic sloping down off to the left and straight-up commercial promotion on the right. Rest assured, though, that this is not a dusted-off press release (funniest joke on the blog? maybe, def funniest on the block :P). It is one hundred percent my original thoughts on the issue of Bacon Skateboards. They rule.
Take most rockish songs from the twenty-first century. The levels on these songs generally stay the same throughout, so you, the listener, must make the remix. Fortunately, all you need is a volume knob. Then follow these simple steps.
1) Let the intro play one or two times at the normal (quiet) volume. 2) CRANK THAT SHIT UP! 3) Let the verses play at normal volume. 4) Crank the choruses UP! 5) Obey these rules, religiously. Make an exception if the last twenty seconds of the song isn't a "chorus" per se. If it isn't, crank it up anyway. 6) After the song is over, shout "A Denial" about a dozen times at the top of your lungs.
Even if this doesn't leave you as pumped as you would have been if you'd just listened to "Smells Like Teen Spirit," you should still feel pretty pumped. If you don't, just listen to "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
Bonus: Applying the volume trick to "Teen Spirit" itself. Be sure to wear protective gear.
Climb in the ideelz carriage, babies, cause we're going for a stroll.
Ten weeks ago, Timbo and J-Timbo teamed up with Nelly Furtimbo to press a single for the club's turntables, a verse-chorus-verse paint by numbos. N-Furtado does the same breathy generic shit she pushed on us with "Promiscuous Girl," not surprising since Timbaland produced that as well. Timbo raps about producing, but of course the main feature of the song is the only sexy person in the trio.
Timberlake sounds like he's trying even harder than usual to be a rapper, even defending himself with zingers like "If sexy never left, why's everybody on my shi-i-i-t." Transitioning from boy-band to b-boy, Justin's landed at the uncomfortable boy-boy stage.
But enough about "whether the song is good" or "what the artist is up to," and none of "what the beat sounds like" because holy yawns on all that, right?
The most compelling feature of this otherwise bland song--besides the end-line (dammit RID DH) stuttering--is the music video. Note each performer's movements. Nelly points her hands at the camera to emphasize her point. Justin points his hands at the camera to emphasize his face. Timbo points his to de-emphasize his face. One gets the impression by watching this that the three artists are being melted into paint, stirred in a big vat, poured into cans, shaken in one of those automatic shakers, then opened and spilled all over a dance floor, where people had just been minding their business, and now suddenly everyone's coated in this beige liquid, but as with all club mishaps (vomiting, pill-fueled wig-outs), they try to pretend it didn't happen and just keep dancing. And so "Give It to Me" coats the nation (maybe even the world), and we're all nearly eleven layers thick (1 wk/layer).
"This Is Why I Rock." MIMS answers the other question America needs answered.
YouTube labelers have been more helpful, indicating it's the "(Rock Version)" of "This Is Why I Rock."
By what appears to be sheer serendipity, the video's graphic depicts professional skateboarder Terry Kennedy (no relation to Jamie or JF), known to people who watch Viva la Bam (by the way, adding to Bam's use of mascara, his heart-a-gram tatoos, and the sorta metro/emo steez of his sex tape is the use of feminine article "la" to as the article in the title of his TV show--sup Bam? U fem? Bi? What're you saying here?) as "Compton-Ass Terry." The image comes from a Krew skateboard clothing company ad appearing in Thrasher and Transworld Skateboarding magazines across the country.
Kennedy rose from obscurity during his teenage years when the Baker team was mining L.A. County for teenage amateur riders. They included Evan Hernandez, Knox Godoy, Brian Herman, and Terry. It was a bit over-hyped; neither Terry nor Knox have really roughed up the skating world in a while, but like most things skate, these guys were hot in their day.
Last I checked, Terry was riding for Element, but there's some news here that he now rides for Baker and Pharrell Williams's vanity skate shoe project called Ice Cream. I don't really know much about this but here's a Youtube promo of sorts.
According to a brief scan of Wikipedia, Kennedy has been featured in some rap videos and was even shot in the jaw in '05. So maybe the connection between Terry Kennedy and the world of hip-hop and MIMS isn't so astonishing as it first appeared.
BTW: As with most skate-related vanity cross-promotion projects (the Bam thing, the Fuel Network), the Ice Cream video is pretty boring: not enough skating, too much self-commentary. Terry Kennedy's never been a standout skater, but his ability to market himself as one "from the streets" has proven remarkably successful. I mean just check out those fronts! Maybe later a post about the respective virtues and vices of cross-polination between skating, hip-hop, punk, TV, etc.
Last time I paid for a haircut, I was laughed out of the salon. I’m going bald (slowly—there’s still some good years left, ladies), and had made the unfortunate mistake of covering my peak with an early-Beatles shag, hiding its recession from all eyes, including my own. I asked Jennifer, the hairstylist at the outlet mall to make me look like an E.R.-era George Clooney, who for those of you unfamiliar with 90s TV looks like a Roman Empire-era Julius Cesar. Trimmer in hand, Jennifer complied, at the end of the process leaving me not only balder than when I started but with an uneven peak that made me look like I’d been hit on the top of the dome with a baseball bat. When I asked her to shave the other side so the ‘do would look even, Jennifer laughed.
I’d never been derided by a hairstylist before, and I haven’t since, because from that day on I’d gone DIY, giving myself a 50’s “Buzz” with a Wahl Clip’N Trim, which is a powerful, if not entirely delicate, means of haircuttery. This continued for over a year, until I was tending bar at Meconi’s Pub and Eatery when Renee of Renee’s Salon walked in and ordered a beer.
At this point, I was sporting a more rugged version of the Clooney I’d asked of Jennifer, albeit with about a six-day beard to round out the edges. After some idle chitchat (Renee’s something of a regular), she eyed my ‘do with a concerned look, and after a pregnant pause, informed me that it was “Industry day” tomorrow, and I could get the full Renee’s treatment for around 20 dollars, which I assumed must have been a substantial discount.
The next day, I wandered down to Pacific Avenue to try to find Renee’s. It was difficult, and I was stranded at a traffic light when I saw her walking down ninth street with the sun in her California blonde hair and a little lapdog at her leash. She invited me to the Fireman’s Park to help Mi Shu do her business, and soon after we were back at her salon to let the haircuttery begin.
After giving me a trim that left the conical nature of my head more understated and the billowing plooms of sidelocks held better in check, Renee moved on to my beard, an eight-day affair that crept down from my sideburns onto my lower neck. She trimmed off the neck hair, leaving me with a well-kept beard, then asked if I wanted the rest shaved off.
She suggested chops, and the results were just hilarious enough to keep:
Renee offered me a discount if when she walked into the bar that night I was still sporting my Ambrose Burnsides. After several minutes of waffling I conceded, and have since oddly received numerous compliments on my ridiculous hypermasculine facial sculpture.
On my way out, I asked if bikers and tattoo artists came into her salon asking her to help them look the way they did, and she said yeah. It’s too hard to do something like that yourself, I guess. Interesting think-piece material: Hardcore guys and their attachment to the girly “creative” types (be they sexed male or female) who actually have the artistic skill to rend them as menacing as they sometimes look. Further thought: Is the tattoo and the piercing and the long hair still a commitment to self-mutilation and therefore “taking a stand,” or simply too conformist and specific in its message to mean anything at all?
This song makes a lot more sense as a message than “This Is Why I’m Hot,” but does little to make sense of just what space MIMS occupies.
I picked this up from allhiphop.com, it’ll be there for a little while longer. Further search for the track, which must just be a mixtape dumper, reveals a realraptalk.com message board thread indicating that the beat was jacked from an unknown Fabolous song, or at least sounds enough like it to appear jacked. Meanwhile, Grape_Rom, djpositiv, kartoon, and kolizon2003 an argument about as apathetic and unresolved as “This Is Why I’m Hot,” albeit more concise:
Grape_Rom: this beat sucks… This song sucks…
Djpozitiv: yes…SUCKS to me!
[. . .]
Kartoon: yo lay off dude
Kolizion2003: thanks
Perhaps MIMS’s semi-success has to do with little more than rhyming mediocre over jacked beats and just making songs that lack internal coherence. “This Is Why I’m Hot”: “I can sell a mill saying nothing on the track.” He knows what he’s doing but not how.
Not last night, but the night before, I was working at the empty bar, making “funocopters” with the coasters by flinging them around like frizbees, occasionally landing one in its proper place, on the bar, in front of a chair, where an imaginary and buxom patron would gratefully glance my way, order a PBR, tip me fifty dollars, then lean over the counter to kiss me. I work at a divey place.
After fifteen minutes of coaster-tossing, the manager, D, came in from some work in back, ordered a Red Hook, didn’t pay for it, and said “follow me.”
He broke out a ladder from the utility closet, climbed into a crawl space over the game room, and proceeded to hand down to me an Ampeg amp head, a dual-15” 400-watt speaker cabinet, a patch cable, and a lock-nut Ibanez metal shredder with tuning knobs on the bridge and a mint-green Corvette-style paint job.
We set up shop in the corner and D quickly blasted off to Volume Level Ten, picking away some Metallica riffs and occasionally stopping to flex his fingers and stare at his hands. “Hurts to bend the strings,” he explained. He had been cutting metal to repair some element of the bar six months earlier, the machine blade slipped, and hot, sharp metal nearly sliced the fingers on his left hand clean off. These Metallica licks were the first notes he’d played since the accident.
Soon he graduated to some “Eruption” and some Nuge, a real 80’s wailer. He’d moved from the East coast to LA, Axel Rose style, with big dreams. Woke up at 30 with a bad hangover and no record deal, shucked north and started a restaurant. The details of the trajectory are unclear, but the arc suffices.
After some abortive Hendrix “Foxy Lady” efforts and a few more beers, D passed the guitar OVER THE BAR to me. In what must’ve been the luckiest stroke of fate cast on me in at least four days, just at that moment a dude and a chick walked in. They work at the restaurant next door, a Texican high-end meat market type joint. I whammed out a big E-minor chord and gave the whammy a little shimmy. I was in business; the Ibanez played like a true axe, hardly any action, easygoing frets, just begging for a shredding.
“What’s going on here?” asked the dude in what must be the only possible reaction to a bartender who just stroked a dipped-out chord.
“Nothin much, just jammin’,” I punctuated this last with some Blues-Box wheedles. “What’ll it be?”
She ordered a Citron shot with a sugared rim--and he--a vodka with a Coke back. I passed the guitar back to D, who jammed some Dokken riffs into the couple’s ears. The couple tried to sit through the onslaught, but they just couldn’t hang. I knew from previous conversations with the dude that he was into techno music and DJing, so it didn’t surprise me that D’s guitar heroics didn’t pass his muster.
They left in a hurry, and as soon as the door closed, D jammed out on some more minor pentatonics, business be damned, pausing only to yell, “You don’t like it! Fuck you! Don’t come back!”
I had to kick D out of his own bar at about 1:45 a.m. FYI George Lynch is from Spokane, WA. Maybe the West isn't as soft as I thought.
Looking for some hot metal to pour into the moulds for the grand re-opening of the ideelz factory, I hit up the Billboard Hot 200 to see what was at the top of the charts.
I’d actually heard “This Is Why I’m Hot” in the car a month and a half ago driving with my friend Jeff from Sea-Tac to downtown Tacoma without realizing, or caring to remember, that it was called “This Is Why I’m Hot.” I listened all the way through, withholding judgment for maybe a guest verse or a change in the beat, but before I knew it the song was over. I didn’t hate the track but I wasn’t sad to see it go, either.
Seeing “This Is Why I’m Hot” at the top of the charts a couple days ago, I didn’t recognize it at first. The title conjures up images of a Pussycat Dolls–like group, a breathy chorus enumerating the various reasons why the hot singers are, sexually speaking, hot. Maybe in more ways than one, i.e. turned on as well as pert of breast and pouty of mouth . . . or maybe there would even be a couple lines saying something like, “I’m wearing a parka / In your apartment / But you’ve got the heater on / Turned up to one hundred and one / (CHORUS) This is why I’m hot.” The name of the performer, MIMS, didn’t provide many indications otherwise. Maybe each letter stood for the first name of the hot girls that sang about why they were hot? Monica, Irena, Michelle, and Serena.
Thanks to Google Images for help assembling the MIMS supergroup.
Anyone who has seen the video and read some Wikipedia and some Yahoo! Shopping understands that MIMS is not an acronym for four hot women who sing in breathy voices, but rather is an acronym for Music Is My Savior, which is the title of his album. Anyone who has taken this much time with the song, trying to find a reason to care about it, is probably only a little more “meh” about the whole thing than really disappointed in the song’s failure to provoke any reaction whatsoever.
Is there anything to be said about this? I thought “This Is Why I’m Hot” worthy of an easy write-off; of course it’s Number One. Remember Daniel Powter? Gargabe-y riff-raff write vacuous tunes all the time and they nevertheless become the "hot"test chart-toppers of their day(s).
In the shower this morning, though, a couple thoughts hit me. First, unlike with Powter and other boring groups that crack their way into everyone’s drive-time and therefore the top of the Billboard Hot 200, I had actually made a conscious decision to NOT have anything to think about MIMS. With Daniel Powter, it had been more of an involuntary reaction the songwritery garbage that I’d dealt with since I was eleven, sitting by the radio waiting for the Gin Blossoms songs to end, hoping that I would be able to cue the Record Button on the tape deck in time when the opening riff to Smashing Pumpkins’ “Today” would start. That is, Daniel Powter faded easily into the background for me, like other people’s conversations at a restaurant; they simply don’t matter. I only think about Powter when I see his name on the charts or at Yahoo! Launch.
For whatever reason, though (maybe simply because most Rap songs manage to deliver), I feel a need to find something exciting in radio rap, and can usually content myself with at least a couplet of clever word-play, a pun that has been dragged from far enough back in pop culture or the animal kingdom to merit discussion or at least quotation, or a brag so ostentatious it is actually just a joke. I didn't find any of these things if "This Is Why I'm Hot."
Structurally, the title of “This Is Why I’m Hot” suggests a sort of middle-school five-paragraph-essay structure that revolves around a well-articulated thesis. Thematically, it suggests that MIMS should at some point state that he is hot for one particular reason.
In Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” Juvenile's “Back That Thang Up,” and many other instances, a hip hop song’s titular deictic has an obvious referent or at least gives the listener a chance to guess. Snoop Dogg gives us context clues like “When a nigga get a attitude,” so we know that the “It” we’re supposed to drop is likely a heavy object, and we’re probably supposed to drop it on someone’s head. If you bought “Back That Thang Up” with the Explicit Content sticker on it you know for certain that “Thang,” to Juvenile (in this particular case) means “Azz,” but “Damn you look good [. . .] You’s a fine motherfucker” gave radio-listeners enough hints that “That Thang” was more likely a body part than, say, a pickup truck.
MIMS doesn’t give us any such help. “This Is Why I’m Hot” doesn’t yield anything so direct or obvious as the help Snoop Dogg and Juvenile gave us. The line “This Is Why I’m Hot” does not, in itself, explain why MIMS is hot, and the surrounding verses aren’t any help. What is the antecedent of “This”? One might suppose it is the smattering of imagery and directly stated instances of hotness contained in the verses, the structural ingenuity with which MIMS put together his rhymes, or, if MIMS assumes that people are watching his video, maybe he points to his face, his balls, his chain, anything to give the listener a clear answer to the central question of the song: Why is MIMS so hot?
The verses aren't super, a monotonous rhythm over and over again, and the rhymes about cars etc. aren't really spectacular or even particularly convincing. Do we even really believe MIMS when he says he's hot? MIMS makes brief efforts at rectifying his argument: "I'm hot cause I'm fly / You ain't cause you not." MIMS’s best defense of his position is a combination ad hominem and weak tautology. I most vividly remember a song’s failure to address its central question from Wee Sing in Sillyville, a video I watched in middle school and high school:
Those four yellow guys, the Yellow Spurtlegurgles, sing an adaptation of “Auld Lang Syne” that, like MIMS, leaves the listener dissatisfied: “We’re here / Because we’re here / Because we’re here / Because we’re here” ad infinitum. There are, however, numerous mitigating circumstances that don't apply to MIMS.
For one, the Spurtlegurgles are singing for kids age 3-6. Furthermore, they are at least trying to answer their question, and one feels, through their unending repetition, a certain level of commitment to resolving the issues at hand. MIMS, on the other hand, can’t even endear himself to us with his preoccupation with the issue. He hopes his “This” will suffice: that’s the way it is, it is what it is; Do not pay attention to this song.” MIMS probably got bad grades on his five-paragraph essays in middle school, too distracted because the heater was on too high and he was wearing a parka, or Monica, Olga, Serena, and Eve were beginning to blossom into womanhood.
MIMS’s failure to write a good five-paragraph rap song really isn’t as frustrating as it is boring, in part because no one really asked MIMS why he was hot in the first place. MIMS is just a hard-working hip-hop artist who owned NYC for a couple weeks with “This Is Why I’m Hot,” which in turn yielded him a record deal, major airplay, and his current position on the pop charts.
To wrap this up in a somewhat cute fashion, we’ll quickly address two final problems with “This Is Why I’m Hot.” First, like Eminem’s “Smack That,” "This Is Why I'm Hot" song presupposes a future in which its own existence will impact its structure. For anyone to ask “Why is MIMS Hot,” people must know MIMS. How do people know MIMS? Because he’s on the radio, explaining why he’s hot.
Second, it is for precisely this circular logic of its own existence that “This Is Why I’m Hot” finally merits attention. Imagine yourself stranded on a scorchingly hot desert island. At first you tried merely to physically escape, sending smoke signals, writing “HELP” in huge letters in the sand. As you got used to the island, though, you set up shelter, found food, and otherwise adjusted to the environment, so you turned your efforts toward maintaining your sanity and your sense of self. You started painting, creating masks, and searching for signs of other life on the island.
You’re digging for roots one day when you strike a bottle. There is a message written on a piece of paper on the inside. It bears only the words “This is why I’m hot.” Hope wells up inside you. Someone has been here before. No answer is proffered because the important thing is not the answer but the fact of asking it. No meaning is conveyed by the immediate structure of the language, but on a higher level, an immensity of meaning emerges. Someone has been hot! They knew why! And they want you to know, too!
MIMS's "This Is Why I'm Hot" similarly contents itself to be an artifact of MIMS's existence more than a testament to any particular topic or idea. "This is why I'm hot" amounts to "I'm here," and, like a bunch of starving, scraggly Robinson Crusoes and Tom Hankses, America listened, but not really very carefully.
