Lineup is out. I have notes

That's right, the Coachella lineup was released about 20 minutes ago, so like the good little obsessive fangirl I am, I have THINGS TO SAY

click to make legible

For those of you wondering how my wishlist panned out (aw, thanks!), I made it easy for you:

YES:

• Bat for Lashes
• Yeasayer
• Grizzly Bear
• Grimes
• Janelle Monae
• the xx
• Paul Oakenfold
• Sigur Ros

NO:

• Garbage -- No! This was a serious missed opportunity, I think. They just reunited and released an album; this should have been a no-brainer.
• Friendly Fires
• Glitch Mob
• HAIM -- Another huge missed opportunity. An indie group out of Los Angeles that is starting to get huge buzz should have been an easy get for Coachella.
• Gabriel and Dresden
• Royksopp
• Massive Attack
• School of Seven Bells -- This wouldn't have been an obvious choice, I don't think, but they had a new album out this year...
• Dash Berlin
• The Knife/Fever Ray -- I would have called this a long shot, except that Primavera Sound festival just announced their lineup and The Knife was on it! So I actually started to get my hopes up that this was actually a possibility for Coachella. Bummin' now.
• James Lavelle
• Pendulum
• Monst
• Burial
• The Antlers -- I also think this should have happened, since they had a new album too.
• Ladytron
• and, of course, though it will never happen... Daft Punk -- It didn't happen, so no shit

Also excited about: Bassnectar, Metric, Four Tet, Phoenix, New Order, Moby (!!), Tame Impala, Dead Can Dance, La Roux, Adrian Lux.

According to someone every day, music dies

Hey guys, did you hear? Indie is dead! I don't usually follow HIPSTER RUNOFF, which is basically what it sounds like. It covers hipster music and "culture" (have we defined what hipster culture actually is yet?), usually in tiresome and off-putting ironic lolspeak and hyperbole. If hipsterism is, at least in part, trolling earnestness, i.e. desperately pretending not to care about something you really care about and doing everything in the name of irony, then HRO exists to troll hipsters by being hipster at hipsters. Have I lost you yet? Good. You just, like, don't get it, man. Appropriately, then, the site has heralded the end of indie, and the article was brought to my attention by Yeasayer's facebook page, with the caption "Someone telling it like it is -- how do we make a change?"

Here we are in the content farm era where Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, SPIN, HIPSTER RUNOFF, Brooklyn Vegan, AbsoluteIndieMag.biz, Stereogum, Buzzfeed Music, Shitty McBlogBlogMagazine.com/Music, GVB, FADER, Complex, [other random ass blog/dumb website/magazine] all generally post the same stuff. It’s just a matter of creating brand loyalty via aesthetics and the perception of premium content to lemming ass internet users.

Maybe just make something that people can share on Facebook to controversially discuss amongst their friends.

The demand for ‘innovative’ content has formed a buzz bubble. Chillwave and sponsored-content-wave artists were the main beneficiary of this bubble (post2k.5-2k11), but now, so many bands are getting a taste of alleged buzz ‘before they are ready’/before it even means anything in a legitimate context. The buzz machine is broken because there is no trusted, fail proof mechanism to create pure buzz.

There is truth in this. Bigger emerging 'indie' artists don't stay 'indie' for very long anymore, and there is no discernible delineation between 'mainstream' press like Rolling Stone and 'hipster' press like Pitchfork or HRO. So you get bands that, by and large, should be indie bands, but they're suddenly already famous before they've even really done anything noteworthy. This article namedrops Lana Del Rey, Purity Ring, and Grimes as examples of this.

I’m not sure if I have unreasonable expectations. There just has to be a new way that bands can ‘become bands’ other than ‘getting on the same set of websites that will issue predictable opinions on them.’ Or maybe a website can offer a new way of presenting bands without standardized commentary. Perhaps ‘streaming services’ like Spotify and Pandora have become those to some extent. Those appeal to the people who ‘just want the music’ without needing to know the context.

I guess what all this means, really, that what is happening is an acceleration of the cycle that we already knew existed: sometimes indie bands outgrow indie and enter the mainstream. But HRO's argument, I guess, is that bands used to have to actually prove themselves before that happened, and it was a critical mass of fan-generated buzz that elevated them, not prematurely fawning articles from music publications desperate to discover the next big thing. So indie bands now are less about the music they produce and more about their capacity to generate interesting content for the press that covers them.


ALL THAT SAID. They haven't really convinced me that this is a thing that has broken indie beyond repair. Theorem:

1. Music speaks for itself
2. Taste is subjective

That is, if a band sucks, then we are in agreement: it sucks! And life goes on. Unless it doesn't actually suck that bad, and a lot of people end up liking it, even if the critics don't (which happens all the time. And life goes on.)

And here is kind of the main point. Purely as a consumer of music, I have very little motivation, outside of the impetus to maybe appear 'cool' or 'scene,' to double-check the credible indieness of whatever group I've just become interested in. Like, what does this even mean?:

Maybe the indie experiment only existed to create Grimes, the ultimate internet content producer who makes content directly aimed at internet viewers. She is the best example of ‘not being a band/musician’, but instead a ‘playing by the rules’ content generation machine that resonates with humans wasting time on the internet.

 I'm not sure I even really care to understand. This is fun:

What I want from music is to like the sound, and (ideally, but not always) for it to speak to me personally in some way. The fact that the artist didn't burst out of a cocoon of spiritual enlightenment with this song on her self-actualized lips means nothing to me if it can still manage to evoke something in me. Sometimes artists write songs for themselves, and sometimes they write them for the people who are listening. Am I being manipulated because I like songs by someone who is "not a band/musician" but rather a "content generation machine"? I don't know, and I don't care. I've passed that point in my life where I need to measure the music I like by anyone's coolness barometer other than my own, thank god.

Ultimately, I'm not too concerned about this article. Like I said in the first paragraph, HRO is a meta hipster troll site, and though there has been a noticeable shift in the way that indie buzz is created and distributed, I am pretty sure life will go on, music will be made, and I'll find something to like. I kind of wonder why Yeasayer felt like they needed to signal boost the article, but trying to analyze the intentions of a band as frequently oblique as Yeasayer is a fruitless endeavor.

Smartphones and dumbusers

One of the more confounding aspects of my geekery (to myself) was the disconnect between technology I embraced and technology I scoffed at, with no obvious set of rules or standards that distinguished the two categories.

Despite teaching myself HTML around 11 years old (Web 1.0 HTML, but still, I had my own website that I have to think, for the era, was pretty nice -- not a disgusting Geocities mess of animated backgrounds, flashing, text, and Comic Sans; yes, I've always been a little elitist!) and building my own PCs and following tech news closely and engaging in any manner of other proto-geek pursuits, I was never much of a gadget person. Paying for a cell phone -- not just paying more  for a phone, but paying for one at all, when a perfectly adequate one could be had for free -- seemed silly. I didn't like answering the cell phone I had, and when texting eventually came about, I found it absolutely exasperating. (It's still not my preferred form of communication, but I understand the convenience.)

Behold: my first cell phone.

At some point, I transitioned into a "phone person." It's still not clear to me at what point in my head I decided I'd had enough with my dumbphones, but I went and bought myself the first generation Moto Droid on eBay a year or so after it came out. It was all downhill from there.

Progress.

I still often finding myself staring at my (newer model) phone as it sits in my hand, because I've already done all of the routine checking on it I tend to do every couple of hours, and I ask it (silently): now what am I supposed to do with you? Aren't you supposed to be great? Aren't you supposed to entertain me for HOURS? Of course, I'm supposed to be the one to put the apps on it that entertain me for hours. I'm supposed to be the one that wants to stream video. And yet. I can go on for ages about how useful this thing is. I can get technical about the ways I've modified it and overclocked it for performance and underclocked it for battery life. But. I still get this nagging sensation that I'm not really using it.

Periodically I come across apps that are so handy and useful that I don't know how it's possible I never knew about them before. I feel, both as a person who likes convenience and as a person who is now supposed to be a (pretty knowledgeable) smartphone user, I should have known about this! Why didn't I? Is it still the remnants of me, the person who didn't want to deal with having a cell phone, much less one that was more complicated than something I could use to call my parents when I needed them to pick me up? Or is it just the natural process of moving through a world that is, technologically-speaking, advancing more rapidly than the average person can follow?

Part of what's interesting, as an observer, is the way that high-tech has gone mainstream. For so long, tech-culture was this esoteric thing that interested people followed, but didn't necessarily participate in because it was accepted that to really be a savvy, top-of-the-game user you needed to have money (to keep up with the high turnover rate) and/or connections. Apple can be credited with always being at the forefront of taking the most current technology and making it accessible. They did it with the Lisa and the Macintosh (even though they didn't invent the GUI), and they did it with the iPod (even though they didn't invent mp3s or music players), and they did it with the iPhone (even though they didn't invent ... ok, this is a can of worms I don't want to open.) The smartphone "revolution" has been particularly fascinating because, for all practical purposes, it means that people carry their computers with them wherever they go. This is a conversation we've all had before, but for me, what it boils down to is that now that technology is pop-culture, not being current goes beyond aspiring techies simply not having the means (or the time) to keep up; now it seems that to evolve at the rate of our whole culture, you need to be gadget-friendly. You don't need to have the top-of-the-line, but being connected in our system does require buying into the smartphone effect.

Mainstream niche

Full disclosure: the following post is probably going to be at least a little bit hipstery and douchey.

I'm not the first person on the internet to write about this, but it is something that I find a little bit amusing. There is this phenomenon where there are certain things that are pretty damn popular and mainstream, that people for some reason treat like they are eccentric or unique tastes. A popular example that comes to mind is Star Wars. I hear people all the time say things like, "Oh, I'm such a geek -- I love Star Wars!" It always makes me think, "Dude, EVERYONE likes Star Wars. It's not exactly offbeat and geeky if EVERYONE likes it." Which isn't to say that people shouldn't like it, because obviously Star Wars is awesome. It's just that I don't necessarily think liking it earns you geek cred. And I also think it's kind of weird in general that people are clamoring all over themselves to earn geek cred. Didn't it used to be that being a geek was kind of a weird thing? Does real geekery even exist anymore if geek = mainstream? Does it even matter? People have been fighting against "labels" for so long, mostly by reclaiming tarnished labels, that maybe in the end the thing that makes the most sense is for people to be mainstream and geeky, popular and nerdy, weird and cool, all at the same time.

Another one is Daft Punk. A performance group used a Daft Punk track from the Tron: Legacy soundtrack on So You Think You Can Dance last week, and I read a few responses online implying how unexpected and awesome it was that a Daft Punk tune appeared on the show. My reaction was like, "First things first -- Daft Punk is an insanely popular group. Pretty much every oxygen-breathing organism on this planet has heard of them. Secondly, you're talking about a song from a very well-known, heavily marketed, rather successful Disney movie as if no one will have any idea what it is." Foolishness, I tell you! And given what I wrote up there, I guess it really doesn't matter whether they're "popular" and "mainstream" or not. I just can't help but laugh a little to myself when people treat these very popular entities as if they have some kind of subcultural cache.

Anyway, so this will be one of those posts that really doesn't have much of a point to it, other than being my less-funny version of a standup routine where they make all of these humorous observations about life and people's little oddities.

I'm smarter than most people in general, so I'm definitely smarter than everyone else who has seen this movie.

I read a (possibly made up) statistic once that something like 75% of surveyed Americans believed that they were smarter than the average American. Now certainly, perhaps the sample group for this survey was in fact composed of above-average Americans. But generally speaking, this is impossible, if we accept that the "average" represents middle value of the data set. If 75% of people were on one side, and 25% on the other, then "average" wouldn't be a true middle.

Knowing what I know about people, and observing time and time again interactions with strangers where it's not just that someone makes a mistake -- it's that s/he is a MORON -- this kind of illuminating survey doesn't surprise me at all.

I think about that idea of most people thinking they're smarter than most other people almost every time I read pop culture critiques. I tend to see a lot of comments like "Well, of course we (the readers of this sophisticated critical review blog) understand that it is satire, but I'm worried that it will send the wrong message to the majority of viewers, who aren't likely to understand what the director/author/playwright/musician is really trying to say." It's the elitist assumption that you are smart enough to get it, but most other slackjawed Americans aren't. The irony of course is that I read this kind of thing often enough that it is no longer a select group of legitimately brainy critics declaring their analytical superiority. It is truly a rather cliche viewpoint among many, many media consumers that they (individually) are privy to the true interpretation (thanks to their huge-ass brains,) but we're all stuck with feeble minds that can't process what we just took in.

Some days I'm cynical and feel like most people are idiots. Some days I'm depressive and feel like I'm the biggest idiot in the room. I've met people who look stupid but are smart, and I've met people who act smart but are actually kind of ignorant, and I've met people who say really bone-headed things but actually kick ass in school. And all of that probably depends on the day I catch them on, too.

Day 30 - Whatever tickles your fancy

Here's a New Years' Resolution - finally finishing that 30 Day Challenge I began back in, er, July. [facepalm]

In any case, this is the last post of that "challenge," which I obviously failed, and it's an open post. The last thing I wrote about before starting the challenge was Coachella, so it seems only fitting that the last post of the challenge might be a wishlist of acts I would love to see at Coachella this (or any) year.

I feel like I need to mention that I know one of my favorite groups ever, Incubus, would not be asked to perform (at least not in the near future, but they may eventually if they prove to have any staying power, at which point they'd be a "throwback" invite) since they have zero indie cred. (Sorry boys, I love you, but you're not a Pitchfork darling.)

So I decided to put on my list acts that I think would feasibly be asked to come to Coachella, even if they wouldn't per se choose to perform. I also didn't include acts that I already saw at Coachella - not because I wouldn't want to see them again, but because it's redundant - however, because I'm not super up on knowing everyone who's ever played Coachella, there may be people on my wishlist who have already played the festival.

David Bowie
Daft Punk
Duran Duran
Roger Waters
Lady Gaga
Yeasayer (this is a cheat, since I saw part of their set last year, but now that I'm much more familiar with their music I'd love to see them again)
Kode.9
Skream
Sasha / Sasha & Digweed
Gabriel & Dresden
Moby
The Pixies
Grace Jones
Royksopp
Janelle Monae
Flying Lotus (missed him last year, really butthurt about it)
Burial
MSTRKRFT
Fatboy Slim
Pendulum
Goldfrapp
Bjork
Roisin Murphy
Caribou
Alanis Morisette
Santigold
Bat for Lashes
Snoop Dogg
The Roots
PNAU
RJD2
Cut Copy

...and this list is probably incomplete. But my brain hurts good enough for me to think I wrung all of the ideas out of it, at least for now.

ADDED!:

UNKLE / James Lavelle
Massive Attack (I can't believe I forgot this one, DUH)
Garbage (another duh, obvious one)
Rolling Stones (rumored this year for some reason? That would be sick.)

Project Runway Fashion Week collections - now with judgements!

So the images from all of the remaining PR contestants' collections are up and about on the internet! There are ten contestants remaining, so that should mean three of these are finalists and seven are decoys. (I feel like the number of decoys gets greater every season... can't they coordinate a little better with fashion week? Or maybe these designers don't mind the exposure, even if they're not in the competition.)

All links are to Tom & Lorenzo, because they posted the pictures so I don't have to.

April Johnston's Collection
I really like a lot of these clothes and would totally wear them, but I don't think this has enough drama for a fashion week runway show.
Prediction: decoy

Andy South's Collection
This is coming from someone who loves shiny, so you must know this pains me: I HATE the metallic chartreuse. Also, the fit and proportions on so many of these are terrible. Someone, please kill satin pants.
Prediction: finalist

Michael Drummond's Collection
Bored. So so so bored. Also, depressed. As per my comment on the TLo blog, I think this is what would happen if Hot Topic tried to go haute couture.
Prediction: decoy

Ivy Higa's Collection
Ivy is, by all portrayals, a massive bitch, so I'm happy to see that her collection looks like it was shat out by J Crew after an overindulgence of chili.
Prediction: decoy

Valerie Mayen's Collection
This is so hit-and-miss for me. Some of the pieces are really interesting and great, and some of them are just plain wack. Kind of like Valerie's work so far on the show!
Prediction: decoy

Mondo Guerra's Collection
Now this is what I'm talking about. There's drama and it's totally weird, but in a perfectly tailored and executed sort of way that it totally works and you know this guy knows exactly what he's doing.
Prediction: winner

Christopher Collins' Collection
I love the gold metallics that are popping up, but overall I feel like the silhouettes here are very tired and uninspired. Not to mention that one of those looks came straight out of the recent team challenge fail that the judges hated, except in different colors.
Prediction: decoy

Michael Costello's Collection
For me, this is actually not bad. It's pretty wearable. But, in perfect Michael C fashion there are some execution issues on interesting concepts, so if this isn't a decoy the sloppiness is unacceptable.
Prediction: decoy

Casanova's Collection
I kind of feel like this collection is an amalgamation of all of the others I've seen already. Maybe it's not his fault that I looked at his second-to-last, but the metallics are everywhere (ref: Andy, Christopher, Michael C) and the goofy shiny pants need to DIE (ref: Andy.) These are nice clothes, but they don't feel any different or any more amped-up from what he's already presented.
Prediction: decoy

Gretchen Jones' Collection
This collection is a shocker. The opposite of what I just said about Casanova - I would not have guessed this was Gretchen if I was not told so. Her elements are there - the nods toward homeless chic, the muted colors - but there are some shapes and silhouettes I would not have predicted from her. And some of the pieces (hot pants, patchwork pants) I would almost have expected her to pronounce "tasteless" had she not done them herself.
Prediction: finalist

News-ish stuff from this week...

Consumers Slow to Embrace the Age of Genomics

I've got a bit of a problem with this article, particularly the headline. I actually read a Cracked article earlier this week that discusses the exact phenomenon the NYTimes article engages in (scroll down to #4 on Cracked to see what I'm talking about.) That is, the headline makes it sound as if the focus of the article is that there is this great new Age of Genomics dawning, ripe with possibility (somewhat true) but that the bumbling consumers are too "slow" (see what they did there?) to accept it.

Page 1 - the "money" page, the page they expect most will actually read - extolls the woes of companies that offer to sequence DNA samples from customers and give assessments of individuals' increased or decreased risk for certain diseases based on their DNA. Their problem? No one's buying. The article offers the possibility that it's too expensive, and then finally this gem is revealed:

But the services face an even more fundamental problem: in most cases, the current level of DNA scanning technology and science is unable to offer meaningful predictions about the risk that a person will get a disease...

... what has become clear to geneticists only in the last year is that the genetic variations known so far can explain only a very small part of the risk of getting most diseases. The rest involves still unknown genetic factors or environmental ones, like a person’s diet. Experts say that, for now at least, in most cases there is little a person can do to act on the information from genome scans.

That quoted bit? That's the truth. That's the long and the short of it. There is no reason at this juncture for someone to spend the money these companies are asking for a full genome scan because we don't have enough information to actually give someone a definite measure of their likelihood for developing diseases with genetic and environmental components.

What's funny is that on Page 2, the article actually continues to reveal more truthiness, such as that identical samples sent to different sequencing companies came back with conflicting results. So by the end of the article, anyone who actually took the time to read it would probably understand why these companies are struggling: it costs too much for little to no benefit. So what's the deal with that headline blaming the public for not embracing our future? It kills me.

Hey Men – Don’t You Dare Blame Sandra for Jesse James Cheating!

There's not much I really need to say about this. Basically, the author recalls talking to male friends about the scandal that broke this week, and the guys blamed Sandra Bullock for leaving him alone with his penis too long. Are these bitches for real? The article itself isn't a super strong rebuttal, but one of the commenters did a pretty good job of summing up what's wrong with that logic:

Lisa McLeod: Men who use a wife’s absence to justify cheating belong in the same category as people who sue McDonald’s for getting them fat.

Question for those men – What would you say if Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama hooked up with the white House kitchen help because hubby was distracted by his job and – whine whine- just wasn’t paying enough attention to his wife?

In other words? Suck it up! If you get married, you're making a commitment to someone who you supposedly love; in addition to that, you're making a commitment to be monogamous. If either of those commitments is something you think you can't keep, don't get married. End of story!

Much ado over a red belt - when is it appropriate to stand out?

In the past few days, a few different scenarios have flitted across my radar that all present the same conflict: when is it more appropriate or advantageous to just be a part of a group or community, and when is it best to just be an individual?

It's tricky. Many, even most, socialized people do desire on some level to be a part of something greater than themselves, be it a group of friends, a neighborhood community, an activist group, a sports team or artists' collective. However, for the past several decades it's been seen as distinctly uncool to be one of the masses, to be a conformist, and to not assert yourself as an individual. So we operate within these groups, or within these understood rules and boundaries, but we try to stand out at the same time.

I was watching an episode of Bridezillas (don't judge me) where there was a battle going on between the Bridezilla and her sister, because her sister didn't want to take out her nose ring for the wedding photos. The bride-to-be was a loathsome human being, as evidenced by the rest of the episode, but the show was suggesting that she was being unreasonable over this particular point as well. I kind of wonder if she was. Not because I'm personally against nose rings (I'm not and wouldn't ban them from my wedding photos) but because I don't think it's out of line to ask that your wedding party look how you want them for your wedding photos. The sister was shooting back at her like "My nose ring is a part of ME, and MY individual expression, and you should understand because you have a tattoo for the same reason," etc. I get that it's tough to have to sacrifice your personal expression to conform, but I think the sister needed to understand that the bride is the one that's going to have the wedding album, to have her wedding pictures framed in her home, and who is going to generally be seeing a lot more of those photos than anyone else will. It wasn't like the bride was demanding that her sister permanently take out her nose ring; she just didn't want it in the photos. The sister eventually agreed to take out the ring, but then on the day of the wedding she interviewed to say that (I'm paraphrasing here) she was taking advantage of the fact that the Bridezilla was distracted by a bunch of other stuff and hopefully wouldn't notice if she left her nose ring in. As much as by that point I wanted to see the bride suffer (like I said, loathsome human being) I felt bad for her that her sister was basically playing her just so that she could make her small individual statement that would mean so little to her, but so much to the bride, in the long run when the pictures came out.

This me vs. group conflict was a constant one as part of being in a sorority. In my house, it was there on the individual level - "I'm in a sorority, but I'm not like other sorority girls. I'm different." Amusingly, it was on the level of the house too - "Our house isn't like those other houses. We're different." And after awhile I started to wonder to myself, "Does every sorority say that about their house?" Even the top houses - the "typical" blonde, bubbly, you name it houses - why wouldn't they say that about themselves? It might be that they say "We're not like those other houses because we strive to be the best" and we say "We're not like those other houses because we strive to be ourselves" (how alternative! how hip!), but we're still committing ourselves to a group. And that group comes with its inter/nationally-prescribed rules, expectations, and mentality that each chapter chooses either to accept or to work around (but never ignore - they're always there.)

As much as a sorority seems to people who never went Greek as one of the prototypical conformist organizations, catering to Stepford Barbies and no one really else, there were actually lots of opportunities where we were encouraged to be ourselves. Ironically, rush was actually one of those times. The more individually cool, different, and uniquely awesome each of us were, the more it reflected on the house as being collectively cool, different, and uniquely awesome. So even though rush was all about pushing the house as a name brand, we were required to stand out from the rest as individual people and give the girls going through rush a reason to remember us by.

But then there's the conflict. It seems many sororities seem to be having a personality crisis wherein the best thing to do to seem relevant in today's universities is to push individualism; however, they're deeply rooted in traditionalism and, indeed, rituals that separate the Greek system ideal from other clubs that group like-minded people on campuses. This last week, a picture went up that reminded my friends and I that during an event meant to honor one of our sisters, another girl in the house (perhaps unconsciously) tried to stand out, specifically, by not following the all-black dress code imposed on all girls in the house who were not the sister being honored. It may have been that she just thought the red belt would add a nice contrast and dimension to her personal outfit, and it probably would have if it weren't for the fact that everyone else was wearing black and not allowing themselves to "pop" for a reason.

Based on these two anecdotes, it would seem that a good rule of thumb is that it's almost always appropriate to be an individual, but when there is a day or event where specifically someone else is meant to have the spotlight, it's probably prudent to defer to them. That doesn't mean, in the case of the Bridezilla, giving them whatever they want without blinking, but it does mean allowing her to have a visual aesthetic where the eye goes to her. It's okay to sacrifice a few hours of your individualism to allow her wedding pictures to look the way she wants, or to let the honored sister's colorful dress be the standout in the room.

At the end of the day, you're still you.

I hope at least one of my approximately three readers is watching this.

I myself needed to catch up last night but once I did my glee exploded out of me like Vinny's vodka-scented perspiration.

Jersey Shore is a cultural behemoth. These kids wear their Italian heritage on their sleeves, but they make sure to express that they don't represent Italians; rather, they represent guidos. Never mind that the term used to be (and still is, in the eyes of the Italian-American PR organizations that have protested this show) a pejorative slur for Italian-Americans, the guidos and guidettes on the show have consciously taken all of the worst stereotypes attributed to their culture and amplified them, but it's not out of irony -- it's out of love for the image. And for themselves. They've made guido culture a completely separate entity from Italian identity, and they are using this show to display to the rest of the world how awesome it is to be a guido. They love being Italian, sure, but on a completely different and separate level, they love being guidos.

And I can't get enough of having them on my TV. This is perhaps the trashiest show MTV has ever aired, which explains why it's up there for me with Rock of Love and The Bad Girls' Club. What can I do, therefore, to put my love out there for the world to see? Stick my name in the Jersey Shore Nickname Generator, of course:



Ladies and gents, I'd really love it if from now on, we could refer to me by my true identity, never articulated properly until today - A-Scream.

Also:

File under: Crimes Against Humanity

Until Glee, Hollywood never saw fit to introduce this man into pop culture for me to ogle on my television.

I can only imagine how much more enjoyable dreck like Transformers might have been if the girls in the audience had been gifted hot pieces like Mark Salling to gaze upon instead of Shia Lebouf, since we know that was pretty much Megan Fox's purpose in the movie for the guys.

In fact, just consider this my open letter to casting agents. While the teenyboppers might be attempting to persuade you to put Robert Pattinson in everything you're ever planning on making, I'd like to implore you to reconsider in favor of the hot mo-hawk dude from Glee.

Suitably kooky, pleasantly catchy

For the past week Lady Gaga's new single has been stuck in my head. And I've found that I don't especially mind.



For one thing, I love the video. Michael K from DListed had this to say about it: "If Chris Crocker shot a parody of a Nip/Tuck promo on the bath house set of Eastern Promises, it would look just like Lady CaCa's new video for Bad Romance. That basically sums it up. That might be a compliment, but I'm not sure." I have to agree that his quote is a pretty accurate description, and for me it falls on the side of complimentary.

Make no mistake - Lady Gaga is wacked out, ya'll. She's born as some kind of weird spiky-headed robot bath house prostitute (at least from my interpretation of the thing) and proceeds to wear all assortments of bizarre ensembles - including a pair of those batshit Alexander McQueen shoes that even Vogue personnel had no idea what to with them when they were sent over to the magazine's offices. But in this video, she also has moments where she's allowed herself to look soft. It's something you never see from her and she actually looked gorgeous (great, considering that she's definitely not one of those conventionally attractive half-singers that was plucked out of the Mickey Mouse club to have a record deal.)

As for the song itself, like I said in the title: pleasantly catchy. I love that she actually sings in it, and I love that it has the earnestness of one of those mid-90's diva power ballads set to a dance beat. Even though it's a late release for 2009, it's quickly become one of my favorite pop singles of the year... which, knowing me and how much I listen to pop music, is saying a lot, because essentially most pop for me falls into "unlistenable" and "tolerable," with very few in the latter category actually transcending into "good" (in my humble listening opinion.)

I've defended Gaga's music on here before, even despite me having had her album The Fame and deciding that most of it didn't do anything for me. But three of her singles have been solid songs that I've really enjoyed (Just Dance, Paparazzi, and Bad Romance) and I can really overall respect the fact that she's actually a genuine singer-songwriter, having performed a lot in New York before she was ever "discovered." I love the following Youtube video because it reveals her raw talent but you can also see touches of the eccentricity that has become part of her shtick today as a bonafide famous person.



I'm thinking that I definitely will want to check out her upcoming album, as even if the first one in its entirety didn't make the cut to stay on my iTunes, she interests me enough that I don't mind following her career.

America's Most Hated

I'm fascinated in spite of myself by the constant ill-will that certain pop culture figures earn just by, it seems, simply existing. I, like most people I'm sure, tend to view those people in any of three categories: 1) Don't hate them and don't get the hate, 2) Do hate them, 3) Understand the hate but like them anyway. To illustrate:

I don't get the hate:
1. Megan Fox
So first off I know that not everyone hates her. She's got a large male fanbase. But the males that aren't her fans, and most females, seem to have taken to rabidly hating her to counteract the lust coming from said fanbase. I can't for the life of me figure out why. Her "faults" as I've observed seem to include being too pretty (to which I say, whatever, haters to the left), not censoring herself in interviews (my comment here is that she's said a few boneheaded things but mostly I think her lack of filter keeps her interesting, so kudos to her), being an idiot (as I mentioned, she seems to have said in my estimation a few dumb things, but I think this is a harsh criticism, as even if she's no genius she's certainly not more stupid than several other less-hated starlets with her same level of celebrity), being a whore (so she plays up her sexpot image in photoshoots, but as far as I know she's been with the same guy for several years... and that's not taking into account the debatable merits of calling a woman a "whore" to discount her worth), and being a bad actor (which I can't disagree with, but again there are plenty of other celebrities that get away with murder on their projects acting-wise and don't get the kind of vitriol that Megan Fox gets.) So in general, if you were able to make it through the longest sentence ever, I think she's harshly judged and I don't get why.

2. Jennifer Aniston
This poor woman just can't catch a break in my estimation. I'm not on Team Jennifer vs. Team Angelina because I don't care specifically about that drama. I feel bad for her now because I do think that immediately in the aftermath of her breakup with Brad, she mistakenly played into the media's framing of her as the tragic dumpee because she perhaps thought it would gain her sympathy. At this point, I think she has tried to move past that, but she's still getting written about as if she were this pathetic person with a miserable love life. And even worse, the Internet bloggers eviscerate her by accusing her of loving that kind of media attention. I don't know Ms. Aniston personally (obviously) but I've heard enough in-person interviews with her to get the impression that she's pretty down-to-earth and totally over what happened several years ago, no matter how much others want to dredge it up.

I get the hate and fully co-sign:
1. Jon Gosselin
I so tired of hearing about this guy (and frankly all of the Gosselins), but at the same time, every time I hear some new stunt that Jon has pulled after the divorce I have a worse and worse opinion of him. Especially in the last week it seems that Jon has pulled out all of the stops in his Douche Quest 2009, whether it was throwing a hissy fit via lawyers and a poorly spelled sign on the property when TLC ousted his name from the title of the show, or the recent revelation that he emptied his joint account with Kate that is supposed to be for the kids (!!), this guy really screwed up the hand he was dealt. I mean, he went from having the sympathy of many for being married to ball-buster Kate, to an Ed Hardy sporting poster manchild of Extreme Douchebaggery.

2. Katherine Heigl
I don't like her because I think she is a hypocrite. She and Megan Fox have both been been lambasted because they had the gall to criticize directors or projects they've worked on in the past, which I don't think is inherently wrong or just cause for scrutiny. However, Katherine brought the level of a-hole up a notch when she basically gave the finger in print to the writers of Grey's Anatomy in announcing her non-eligibility for that year's Emmys while she was still on the show. Then, she mentioned that she felt her character in Knocked Up was a sexist stereotype, and I felt that she did have a right to say so. But my annoyance developed when she went on to choose even more one-dimensional, stereotypical characters (27 Dresses, The Ugly Truth), and I couldn't help but wonder if she wasn't just airing a personal beef with Judd Apatow et. al by trashing their particular movie. In that scenario, she's unprofessional at best. In another likelier scenario, she's just a hypocrite. She'll keep on choosing sexist roles as long as she gets her Almighty Paycheck, even if they are of the ilk that she's denounced in the past. And I just can't respect that.

I get the hate, but I don't care.
1. Lady Gaga/Kanye West
Both of these inhabit one spot because I feel the exact same way about both of them. I find both of their public personas irritating, ostentatious, and ultimately flash-in-the-pan. I don't consistently enjoy either of their music, but they both have released songs that I do like. However, I do think that (ESPECIALLY when compared to some of their contemporaries) they possess talent in their craft, and within the arena of pop music one could do worse than listen to Kanye or Gaga. People have been crowing with delight at the news that their joint tour was canceled, but I think it would have been a fascinating show due to both of their showmanship and particularly Gaga's proclivity to completely re-work her songs when she sings them live. So I kinda get why people don't like them, but I can't bring myself to hate them because I think they have redeeming qualities.

2. Jessica Simpson
I mostly would just like to see her left alone. She was a crappy pop songstress at the height of her fame, and she was able to capitalize on her (at the time) relationship with Nick Lachey. Now she's not really relevant in mainstream pop culture, despite releasing country records. So I just can't understand for the life of me why people get up the emotion to hate on her still rather than just leaving her alone and ceasing to write about her. She's a non-issue at this point, and unlike other has-beens of her era, she doesn't seem to be always attempting to draw attention to herself every time she goes out. This isn't a "LEAVE JESSICA ALONE!!!" so much as it is a "Why are we still talking about Jessica Simpson?" I'm just really neutral on her entire existence and am surprised that people still seem to take her so seriously.