Grammys? No Thanks!

I'm pretty out-of-it when it comes to current popular music trends, as if my periodic music video embeds didn't clue you into that. I did, however, have the misfortune of forgetting my iPod while taking a road-trip to visit my mom in Virginia, so I heard the execrable Grammy-nominated Shake it Off by Taylor Swift. I don't have anything against Taylor Swift, on the one occasion on which I met her, I didn't even realize that she was a soon-to-be-famous songstress (so I have to assume she was pretty down-to-earth) and I have a fervent desire that she achieves actual immortality so she can become Taylor Swift IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE and break up with every guy in the universe- I just can't stand her crap music. Shake it Off, a solipsistic song about (you got it) Taylor Swift is especially horrible, just check out the lyrics:


'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off
Heartbreakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off


Ugh, it's tailor-made (better yet, Taylor-made) for the soundtrack to Gitmo, or Malebolge, or (even more hellishly) Sarah Palin's Iowa speech.

The other front-runner for song of the year, Stay With Me by Sam Smith, is not offensive at all, and I wish Mr Smith, a "blue-eyed soul" singer from the UK, all the success he deserves. I think he is exactly the right guy to become the 21st Century's Rick Astley, and foresee a time twenty-five years from now when kids smithroll each other.

Personally, I think the Grammys are a crapfest, a perfect distillation of the utter crap that the music industry extrudes like so much pink slime. Everything you need to know about the Grammys can be summed up by Christopher Cross' sweep of the 1981 Grammy awards (though, again, I have no personal animus against Mr Cross, and actually dig the fact that he played a gig with Deep Purple once).

This year, you know the Grammys are a total sham because Darkey and the Keys haven't been nominated for a single Grammy, even though they are a billion times better than Taylor Swift:





My favorite member of the band is the big dude with the short hair and the bushy eyebrows... he looks like he's wandered in from another band's recording session, or from another planet altogether. I have come to think of him as "Tiny", the cousin of the lead singer and that the two had this conversation before forming the band:


Darkey: Hey, Tiny, you still got that electric guitar of yours?

Tiny: Sure, I occasionally play songs from Frozen to entertain our nieces.

Darkey: Well, I'm forming a band, think Tamil death metal, with a Ronnie James Dio meets Shiva as Ascetic aesthetic.

Tiny: Darkey, I dig the idea, and you know I'll always have your back, but we have a dress code at work.

Darkey: Tiny, I really need you, you're the best guitarist in the neighborhood.

Tiny: I'm in, as long as it doesn't interfere with my job at the Kuala Lumpur Municipal Water Authority.


And the rest was history, in my imagination.





A-TATIKITATIKITITIKKITITIKKITITATIKI... WHOAAA!!! 1! 2! 3! 4!

I Don't Dig Her, but She Doesn't Deserve This

I am on record as someone who detests Taylor Swift's music, but I have no personal animus against the woman herself. I met her when she was on the cusp of superstardom, and the fact that I didn't realize that she was a celebrity suggests a down-to-earth nature. One could say that I like her as a person while hating her music, so I was taken aback by the fact that alt-right racists and neo-nazis have latched onto her as an 'Aryan' icon. I imagine most of them harbor fantasies of killing Kanye West onstage for being a dick to their 'goddess'... well, they harbor fantasies of killing any African-Americans they encounter, just as their cohort Dylan Roof did.

Why is Taylor Swift the recipient of this 'Aryan' ardor? Sure, she's tall, thin, and blonde (personally, I don't find her all that attractive- I find her too 'angular' for my tastes, though I can see her as a jolie laide archetype), but I think there's something deeper at the root of this infatuation... Just as Taylor Swift was embarking on her career, there was an explicitly neo-Nazi white nationalist pop duo made up of blonde pre-teen twins whose adult male fans had an unhealthy sexual obsession with the underage 'Olsen Twins of Hate'. The girls of Prussian Blue eventually gave up the hate thanks to Dylan and weed, leaving horny white supremacists without a fantasy object for a while. As right-wingers are masters of psychological projection, it didn't take long for them to project their white-power/masturbatory fantasies on the politically unfathomable Ms Swift.

I feel sorry for Taylor Swift, it's not her fault that the haters gonna 'bate, 'bate, 'bate, 'bate, 'bate.

Tagged, I Tells Ya... Tagged!

So, I've been tagged for the "Honest Scrap" project by Johnny Pez, the go-to guy for public-domain speculative fiction of the early 20th Century, and a compelling "alternate history" narrative. So, I am now compelled to reveal ten facts about myself. Here goes nothing:

1. In my twenties, I spent many productive hours having the crap beaten out of me by this gentleman. He had a knack for making you laugh, even as he was putting you in the hurtbox. Shockingly, he succumbed to cancer in 2006. Eight hundred people attended his memorial service- fittingly, we laughed as much as we cried.

2. On my 25th birthday, I ran around the block naked, not even footgear, on a dare. On my 30th birthday, some friends of mine took me to the Maison du Sade on 23rd St, where they bought me a public spanking- I went for a thirty-mile bike ride the next day, much to Mistress Bianca's chagrin.

3. I am an experienced stage electrician, although I have never been paid for such work. For many years, I did electrical rigging for the Village Light Opera Group, though I am not a big Gilbert and Sullivan fan. While in college, I constructed a stage for The Jesus and Mary Chain from platforms and 2x4's. I tested the solidity of the stage by jumping up and down on each platform, as I was a lot more... substantial... than the gracile members of the band. The stupid radio station staff, rather than comping me a concert ticket, expected me to work crowd control in the Loge section.

4. I have knowingly and willing engaged in entomophagy. The first insect I knowingly ate was a hapless cicada that happened to be resting on a friend's screen door. A bunch of us had been drinking in the backyard. As soon as I said, "Hey, I've read that these things are edible" my friend divined my intention. Anyone familiar with cicadas knows what a racket they can make. Well, this one made a racket, until I bit its head off. I refrained from eating the wings. I would compare the experience to eating a huge celery-flavored M&M, crunchy on the outside, gooey goodness within. Subsequently, I have tried crickets, katydids, and ants (which are tangy). It goes without saying, eating the caterpillar in the mezcal bottle is a no-brainer. If I ever get my ass to the not-so-drouthy antipodes, I will refrain from throwing a weta in the deep-fryer for fear of legal sanction. To anyone "squicked out" by the prospect of eating bugs... you have accidentally done it on a fairly regular basis.

6. In 1993, I swam across the Rio Grande on two separate occasions. On both occasions, I was visiting the hot springs at Big Bend National Park.

7. Among the bizarre things I have done for a living, I: spent some time on a client's roof in the Bronx, quipped with a video camera, trying to catch a jerk who was taking potshots with a pellet gun at staff members during shift change; drove a forklift in Central Park at night in January for the Gates Project; assisted in the delivery of a lamb.

8. Been in a palace (Versaille), been in a jail (North Hampden County Correctional Facility near Springfield, MA- had to drive up there to interview a guy named Junior about a car accident he claimed to have been involved in in Brooklyn... he was as inept in auto insurance fraud as he was in drug trafficking. I made him draw a diagram of the "accident site" while he was wearing shackles). I just don't want to be reborn a snail.

9. I can play music on my ***REDACTED-FUTURE POST*** and have done so at the company picnic talent show every year.

10. Like Elvis, I met Richard Nixon (at a black-tie fundraiser for St. Vincent's Hospital back in the early 90's). I was polite and formal. Last year, I was told I met Taylor Swift (at a fundraiser for the non-profit I work for part-time). I was polite and formal. Not being up on my current pop culture, I did not recognize the young woman, but was informed the following day by a co-worker, who said, "I thought she looked like Taylor Swift, but I don't like Taylor Swift, so I didn't say anything." In no way would I compare Taylor Swift to Richard Nixon, beyond their both being bipedal mammals.

I am going to add a number eleven... I am very shy when it comes to forwarding things like this, so I will put it out there that I'd think it would be a hoot if any commenters would follow up on this.

Edit: My original number four was a self-evident no-brainer, so I changed it to something more interesting

Second Edit: I totally forgot a number five... I also love all the responses. You folks are great!

Edit of the Second Edit: Looking at the list, I realize that my original number five was accidentally "typed over" when I expanded item four- I originally had "I am a member of NOW" as item five.

A Heroine Unlooked For

It's been a while since I've mentioned Taylor Swift on this blog. I have long been on the record saying that, while I'd rather jab a fork into my thigh than to listen to any of her songs, I have no animus against her. I actually met her right before she became a household name, and I never would have guessed that she was a celebrity, because she was so low-key and unassuming. She also seems to be very devoted to her fans.

I was surprised when she wrote a detailed Instagram post about her reasons for voting against Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn and urged her fans to educate themselves about political candidates and vote for those that represent their values. Predictably, the anime Nazi crowd lost their shit about this. Since Ms Swift has such a vast following of mostly-young, mostly-female fans, her coming out as a Democratic voter has terrified Republican politicians... indeed, after her endorsement, voter registrations have spiked. It looks like a sleeping giant has been awakened, and it's not going to take any BS from regressive men. Taylor Swift is a survivor of a sexual assault, so it's tempting to infer that the Kavanaugh hearings, and the Republican attacks against a survivor, forced her hand. At any rate, the long-reticent Swift has revealed herself as an advocate for civil rights, and the GOP just isn't aligning with her values.

If I were given a thousand guesses, I never would have guessed that Taylor Swift would be this year's 'October Surprise', but it seems as if she's The Chosen One who will lead her legions of fans to turn this country, indeed this society, around... and I can say that I met her 'back then'.

A Brain in Jar? A Bodiless Star!

Wiley posted part of an article about the preservation of brains after death:


I have been read­ing about the Brain Preser­va­tion Foun­da­tion (BPF), which hopes that chem­i­cal and other meth­ods, includ­ing a refined ver­sion of plas­ti­na­tion, will enable brains to be pre­served with such fidelity that mem­o­ries, per­son­al­ity, and even iden­tity can be preserved.

This may well seem rem­i­nis­cent of the older cryo­genic preser­va­tion projects which have not always had a good press over recent years, though they still con­tinue to oper­ate and indeed have refined their processes some­what. But although the BPF also has a vision of bring­ing peo­ple back to life after their nat­ural death, it is in many ways a dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish. It does not itself offer any kind of ser­vice but merely seeks to pro­mote research, and it does not expect to see a prac­ti­cal sys­tem for many years


Traditionally, attempts to preserve brains have been portrayed as sinister plots to prolong the depredations of evil dictators both terrestrial:





and intergalactic:





Sure, if you put an evil brain in a jar, you have an evil brain in a jar. Not a lot of good guys seem to get the treatment, with a memorable exception, and even then, he was just used as a glorified building superintendent:




Why wouldn't having your brain preserved outside of your body actually be a good thing? If the aliens want to put your brain in a jar and take it around to have interplanetary adventures, why fight it? Sure, it would suck to have your brain stuck in some facility on a remote planet running the sewer system, but it wouldn't be bad to have your brain taken along on jaunts to thirty-seven different celestial bodies—planets, dark stars, and less definable objects—including eight outside our galaxy and two outside the curved cosmos of space and time. Even better, maybe the Brain Preservation Foundation can preserve Taylor Swift's brain, so she can keep breaking up with dudes for millennia and writing songs about said breakups. Even better, Taylor Swift's preserved brain can be placed in a space probe so she could break up with every dude in the universe.

Clueless Caucasian Curmudgeons Critique Cute Korean Cutup

Who better to weigh in on a genuine international pop phenomenon than an angry, stupid old white guy? I have to admit that my exposure to the song Gangnam Style was pretty late in the game, and completely due to a post by Interrobang. My knowledge of K-pop is slightly more substantial than bubbles but less substantial than rain. Of course, being ignorant about a particular subject may cause me to eschew criticism of said subject, but Bill O'Reilly has no such qualms about flaunting his dumbassitude. Yeah, Bill just had to weigh in on Gangnam Style and, in a masterstroke, brought on somebody even more ignorant than himself to contribute his two cents. Bill could have brought on a hip, young Korean-American to break down the cultural phenomenon, but he's not really trying to understand it... this is a classic example of fostering the ignorance and bigotry of his audience.

Bill's guest Dr Keith Ablow is even more clueless than he is. Let's unpack some of Ablow's idiocy regarding the song. Here's the "Heart of Dorkness", so to speak:


For Americans, at least, most of the lyrics of Gangnam Style can't be understood, since they are in Korean. Here's a sample: "Na je nun ta so ro un in gan jo gin yo ja . . . " Psy himself performs (like many entertainers) under a pseudonym. His real name is Park Jae-sang.


The great sin here is that Ablow states that the song can't be understood, yet he makes no attempt to understand the lyrics, even though he goes so far as to write some of them out. It's so much more comforting to foster the prejudicial view that the song is gibberish... would such bullshit fly if Ablow were discussing Nessun Dorma or In Fernem Land? If Ablow had decided to scratch below the surface and do his homework, he would have discovered that Gangnam Style is actually a slightly subversive satire of a stratified society. Here in the 'States, we need more such satire.

Of course, the popularity of Gangnam Style is international- any discussion of the song's impact has to take this into consideration. South Korea, with its population of just under fifty million has internet usage of 82.7%, making it the 17th "most wired" nation on Earth (the United States comes in 27th place with 78.3% connectivity). Trying to shoehorn the popularity of the song into an "Americacentric" model is plumb dumb.

As far as the popularity of the song outside of Korea, I imagine much of the popularity in Asia is due to the fact that fans are drawn to "PSY" because they can relate to him better than, say, to a Taylor Swift or a (shudder) Ted Nugent. Bill-O, of all people, should realize that people enjoy seeing folks who look sorta like them represented in the media.

Moving on to the Western World, there are approximately 1.7 million Korean-Americans in the U.S. Korean-Americans have long labored under the stereotype of being a model minority, composed of hard-working, wonky brainiacs. Gangnam Style, much like the "Howard and Kumar" movies, shatters this stereotype. Here we have a thirtysomething Korean guy who is a jokey, yet savvy, party animal- take your "model minority" perceptions and shove 'em. One of my favorite iterations of the song is this one, which perfectly encapsulates the "cool brainiacs" aesthetic.

Outside the Korean-American community, a lot of youth culture is otaku culture... there is a hearty embracing of Asian popular entertainment and the young consumers drive much of the popularity of web content. The incredible rise of Gangnam Style is incomprehensible to a square old fogey, much like the inexplicable resurgence of 80's pop tunes used to "count coup" on n00bz and the bizarre popularity of glorious Russian cheese among snarky youths. The very concept of "cool" in the 21st century involves syncretism, it's a blending of cultures low and high, east and west, meatspace and web- the cool people are African-Americans who are obsessed with kung-fu movies, Canadian muppets, and glorious mutants. Who would be more appealing in today's pop culture melting pot than a not-so-young Korean guy, surrounded by pretty young women, singing a piss-take of a song, rooted in an African-American musical style, with a brief, catchy English chorus and featuring a hilarious video?

Gangnam Style works on many levels- it's a satire, it's a physical comedy, it's an easily learned dance craze (like other inexplicable hits). Hell, even a clumsy galoot (don't look at me, I'm a dancing machine, most guys who like to fight are) can hit the floor when this tune plays. Expect to hear the song played at weddings for years to come (my prediction is that the "Hey, sexy ladies!" part will be played while the bridesmaids assemble, maybe when the garter is tossed).

Finally, Gangnam Style lends itself to the DIY/mash-up culture, and has spawned a plethora of videos, including some truly inspired ones. Gangnam Style, far from merely being the most popular Youtube video of all time, is actually a good microcosm of the Internet itself- it's a true melting pot of styles and themes from across the planet. It's no wonder that a couple of fuddy-duddies, addressing an audience of grumpy old fogies, can so spectacularly fail in their assessment of this cultural phenomenon.

UPDATE: Now, here's a real assessment of Gangnam Style by someone who knows what she's talking about.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Special thanks to zrm, who corrected my misspelling of "Gangnam". Thanks, old chum! mikey observes Bill-O's combination of racism and opportunism, which leads me to this observation... I think the main reason Bill's ass is chapped by the popularity of Gangnam Style is that it represents the primacy of "hip-hop culture" worldwide. In Bill-O's world, Asians are supposed to be the model, "almost white, well behaved" minority. To see a Korean guy performing a rap dance number must make Bill-O's head feel all assplodey. Remember when America's Racist Uncle decried the fact that young Latinos identify with "rap culture"? Well, now even the "nice" non-whiteys have succumbed to the beat. Combined with the overwhelming support for President Obama by Asian-Americans, expect to see a lot of Asian-bashing in the conservative media in the coming years. Yeah, yet another "natural Republican voter" constituency fleeing the "big tent" due to bigotry and ignorance. J. Neo Marvin compares Gangnam Style to the most important song of the 1990's, the prescient Common People by Pulp. Now, this is how to approach a song- figure out the lyrics. Of course, Bill-O and his knuckleheaded guest don't want you to be exposed to the class-critique central to Gangnam Style, it suits their purposes to portray the song as so much gobbledegook (nasty pun intended, we all know what Bill-O was thinking). The unintentional hilarity of Ablow's take on the song is that his characterization of its popularity as a symptom of a shallow American youth culture is based entirely on an extremely shallow understanding of the song.

Creepily Prescient!

This post is inspired by OBS's latest post, about watching a documentary about METAL GAWDS Iron Maiden. I was never into Maiden as a high-schooler, entirely due to stupid teenage tribalism... I was a punk, not a metalhead. Foolish, I know, hardcore punk and thrash metal would be virtually indistinguishable to a disinterested listener. My great and good friend J-Co was a big Maiden fan, and he put a couple of their songs on a mixtape he made me (remember when kids did that and it destroyed the recording industry?). Funny, Maiden was pretty much nerd metal, with its references to Coleridge, Frank Herbert, and The Crimean War (hilariously, the linked video was preceded by an ad for Coors Light in Spanish and accompanied by an ad for a Taylor Swift release). Yeah, my Iron Maiden prejudice was pretty much baseless, and could be chalked up to youthful foolishness.

J-Co, being a huge Iron Maiden fan, and an inveterate collector of music, also had not one, but two of Bruce Dickinson's solo albums. Cyclops, a particular song from Bruce's second album, was written about paparazzi, but it could be equally applied to our modern surveillance society:


We all have secret lives
In our secret rooms
Living in our movies
Humming our own tunes

Living life in camera
When the night is closing down
Sliding into darkness
You could be like me

Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Why are you looking
At the camera's eye?

Where are you staying?
Why are you leaving?
We watch you breathing
Through the camera's eye


Blast it, the contractors monitoring the web for the NSA have a right to rock out on the job: