I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO...

Verses

Elvis Costello "Shabby Doll"

Giving you more of what for
Always worked for me before
Now I'm a shabby doll
What's going on behind the green elevator door
With just a shabby doll

There's a hit man facing
A compromising situation
With just a shabby doll
And a very neat line in character assassination
She's just a shabby doll

She's just a shabby doll
She's putting him off and putting you on
She's just the shabby doll
You're swearing upon you know in your heart
She's gone you know in your heart
She's just a shabby doll

There's a girl in this dress
There's always a girl in distress
She's just a shabby doll
She's so sure she's self-possessed
Then again she's half undressed
She's just a shabby doll

The boy that I used to be
Showed no sign of sympathy
For just a shabby doll
I have betrayed you and me
And paid for my own bribery
With just a shabby doll

He's the tired toy that everyone enjoyed
He wants to be a fancy man but he's nothing but a nancy boy
He's all pride and no joy

And being what you might call a whore
Always worked for me before
Now I'm a shabby doll
Untie the gag the cat's out of the bag
But won't show his claws
He's just a shabby doll

She said you must be joking
Some things are left unspoken
You're just a shabby doll
He's lying limp and soaking
He was openly broken
By just a shabby doll

http://miraclesnmagic.wordpress.com

Longtime NBA sideline reporter, Craig Sager, was thrown out of the Olympic Village, and China altogether, early Sunday morning after security guard dogs picked up traces of weapons-grade plutonium emanating from his controversial "Electric Suit of Destiny" (seen here during the 2007 NBA All-Star game).

WHHHAAAATTT HAPPEN????!!!!!!!
This is so sad.

While hosting a celebrity boxing match, the crowd turned on Jersey Shore's Jolie "Angelina" Pivarnick. "The crowd just went crazy and started throwing Kotex at her," says her mother. "She went there to have a good time and she got ridiculed and abused."

Cynthia Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest, writer and retreat leader. She is founding director of the Aspen Wisdom School in Colorado and principal visiting teacher for the Contemplative Society in Victoria, BC, Canada.

Verses

"Three Wishes" by The Pierces

We'd be so less fragile
If we're made from metal
And our hearts from iron
And our minds from steel
And if we built an army
Full of tender bodies
Could we love each other
Would we stop to feel

And you want three wishes:
One to fly the heavens
One to swim like fishes
And then one you're saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away

You say you want to know her like a lover
And undo her damage, she'll be new again
Soon you'll find that if you try to save her
It renews her anger
You will never win

And you only want three wishes:
You want never bitter
And all delicious
And then one you're saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away

You only want three wishes:
One to fly the heavens
One to swim like fishes
You want never bitter
And all delicious
And a clean conscience
And all it's blisses

You want one true lover with a thousand kisses
You want soft and gentle and never vicious
And then one you're saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away

"outside in my Impala"

Perhaps it's just a matter of my dotty (dotted?) past in school, a personal-permanent feeling that Autumn (the season that smells like school) is oppressive—but really—isn't this Autumn, September, 2010 in New York City, America, feeling OPPRESSIVE (let my people [I mean me] go). The Tea Party (psychotic misappropriators of our glorious Revolutionary Histories) is gaining traction. One cannot help but project a bleak (HOPEless) 21st century, like:

more pro-war, corporate deregulating, tax-cutting (social program gutting) and anti-civil rights legislature (or non-legislature?)...meanwhile bridges and roads and systems of public transportation are crumbling, collapsing and there's also an increase in freakish weather disasters and oil and chemical spills and terrorism and joblessness is increasing and there's no healthcare and nothing's getting manufactured here anymore and tariffs are rising and police stations and fire houses are closing and schools are closing and no one can afford to go to college, cannot borrow enough money and it's 19th century Russia plus robots and cloning and giant, masturbatory virtual-reality machines that people choose to live in...

There's that. And it's been humid. Pillow and I saw the President's motorcade yesterday, sort of fast and rough (a Tahoe packed with orange-suited gunmen) and limo's look so old-fashioned now. It's unstable. It's tornadoes and hurricanes and gruesome murder trials and The Yankees losing game after game..."Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly. Is this my new reality?" And I know full well this mess isn't Barack Obama's fault. I just see in him what I see everywhere: uncertainty, faltering, fear, thinness.

Some Pop right now reflects this local color brillianty.

*I've been meaning to write for weeks about Nicki Minaj's verse on Trey Songz' (and we LOVE Trey Songz) bunkish "Bottoms Up." Coming in at 2(min):40(sec) (do skip ahead), Nicki picks up the "drunk-in-the-clurrb" sticks with some lines about margaritas and pink champagne delivered como...Miss Adelaide, a gangster's moll, a zany/glamorous hood of the 20th century, but also Kristin Cavallari. She whips up (punny!) a narrative with the perfecto line, "I don't say hi/I say keys to the Benz," which then leads to a projected, pretend snarling rage, for which she quickly apologizes with, "Excuse me./I'm sorry./I'm really such a lady./I rep Young Money./You know...slim...baby...?" And then we're talking about tabloids and Anna Nicole Smith as a possible saint. And WOW Nicki, thanks so much for reminding us that Smith's wacked-out Trim-Spa promotional VMA rant of 2004, "DO YOU LIKE MY BOOOODDDDYYYY??!!!" was a f*^&ing seminal text. Anna Nicole Smith was a trailblazer in the world of AVATARS, the art of self-making and disseminating. A genius. And Nicki too for saying so (and her everywhere-at-once, melodic delivery)! It's pretty gothic though, right?

**Like Rihanna's "Only Girl (In the World)"—I love how unafraid Rihanna is to come-off crazy and desperate (I mean, "on the brink of ___?") and self-destructive; it's her newish oeuvre (rebel fleur!). And her alarming/ist siren-voice and accompanying heavy electronics only magnify the dynamic (drugged? futuristic? soldierly?), fast-alternating paranoia and carelessness at the heart of her recent work. In "Only Girl" she expounds on Be and Kanye's "Ego"-as-sex-organ metaphor of 2009 by posing Ego-as-sexual-orientation, as...thick zombie presence, as liquor? Rihanna demands (screams), "I want you to make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world,/Like I'm the only one that you'll ever love,/Like I'm the only one who knows your heart, only girl in the world,/Like I'm the only one that's in command,/Cause I'm the only one that understands how to make you feel like a man." In this relationship, sketched on the dancefloor, neither party is responsible for their own emotions (or gender identity), neither have any power, or "command." They must force each other's feelings, act and react. They must possess one another, and in so doing both lose self-possession. The lovers are mirrors. The partnership is proof of materiality? In this rapid, loose, disordered 21st century, building and keeping and believing an identity for oneself has never been more important (never been so broadly the object-of-careers, actions, outfits, utterances), or more difficult, more maze-like and wonky and elastic. In this track, Rihanna is bluntly insisting that her and her man bind together to stabilize and affirm their identities, as if they are the only information, the only information in the world, Adam and Eve, one body, consumed by one another, blind to everything and everyone else, love babies in the womb, First and/or Last Peoples. Oooooh it's kinda chilly and doomed. And smart. I feel like it's about images too. Like, how impossible to be "the only girl in the world" when holograms and billboards and digital spirits fill the very air, making for a Floating World (visible behind our eyes too!). You know?

***Another one for self-destruction and bad prophecies right naw is Kanye (of '09's cute "Ego" swagger). His single "Power" opens better than most things, "I'm living in the 21st century/doing something mean to it..." (I have been loving invoking the "Twenty-first century" that sounds like a bell toll when you speak it.) What follows is crashing (more sirens!), "Global," genre-surfing bits and samples plus real-talk, a man drifting between tabulating baubles and mentioning/musing political consciousness and booze and powder and suicide and back to suicide doors and himself and the World and himself and the World. It not perfect. But it's so much. (And the video—magazines are history paintings!)

****Of course (I mean, history lessons are always helpful), the song that has taken my temperature best this week is a mini-throwback, an (ghost)Impala hovering outside, Lloyd Banks and Keri Hilson's 2006 collaboration, "Help." From Hilson's introductory cooing, "G-Unit...," to fade-out, it brings the rawest nostalgia, a snuffing/damning certainty that the dreams attendant to the noises (the G-Unit noises) are dust, dunzo, shaken-out. In 2010, the sound of Lloyd Banks in 2006 makes me want to cry, like it serves to conjure lost love, lost ease, lost power.

Look at this album cover!------------

Mel Tormé! Death of Empire!

xoxo

faces of ______

CAVE CANEM

Powhatan's Mantle

White-tailed Deerskin, shells

Virginia

17th century

Gorgeous Italian Wedding Cake

too blessed to ____

Memento Mori

Humanity and Empathy are 2 of the 4 principles at facebook. Those were the 2 principles I was missing on that evening. Why are there so many tweets? Well this isn't a simple subject.....I wish I could meet every hater. I wish I could talk to every hater face to face and change there a opinion of me one conversation at a time. I wish they all knew how much I really cared about music and pop culture and art and peoples feelings.

Dacula started its history as the town of Chinquapin Grove. However, the name was changed at founding, due in part to the fact that no chinquapin trees actually existed in the city. The city of Dacula has a storied and colorful history dating back to a shocking murder in the early 1920s of a father and son. Dacula is now more known for its large Memorial Day parade, professional and collegiate athletes, and Little Mulberry Park^{[citation needed]}

Dacula's name comes from letters in Decatur and Atlanta,^[5] two nearby cities that were already prospering at the time of Dacula's founding. The name "Dacula" is properly pronounced da-CUE-la (duh-Q-luh).

The city was once home to a train station on a CSX line through Northeast Georgia, although the station closed back in the mid 1950's. The city has experienced immense growth from a small, one light town in the early to late 80's, to now having nearly 10 public schools both from the Dacula and Mill Creek clusters of Gwinnett County Public Schools. It is also home to one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the Southeast United States, Hebron Baptist Church, which recently finished construction of a 3,850 seat auditorium.

Linebacker Michael Boley of the Atlanta Falcons lives in Dacula.

[edit]

como "Hard Knock Life"
tween(girl)-beloved sample/quotation

—BILLY JOEL—
—ORPHAN ANNIE—

—THE BROADWAY MUSICAL—

—SEAN KINGSTON—

these are parallel!

I think about Paris Hilton's recent arrest in Nevada for cocaine possession with that "nightlife impresario" twin named Cy. Because I think Paris Hilton dated the producer of this track, J.R. Rotem. But maybe she didn't. Because (duh!) he was a Brit Spears assoc. of the Adnan Era, like he helped Jamie Spears build that case against Adnan...or not? What?...Remember when Paris and Britney dressed each other up in slashed fishnets and Bebe minidresses and alerted the paparazzi? And also—this is pretty obscure—I remember reading a bit in a tabloid about Paris Hilton printing photographs of Brit's kids at a FedExKinko's (for a scrapbook?).

***not Uptown

ghetto romance-----Angela Chase (Anne Frank)

Guess Who's Back... Back Again...

omgomgomg

hotel de love

I signed off for my beach week, but the house has Wi-Fi and I can't be quiet for (over)long spells.

Here (on The North Fork with my family) everyday is like dreaded Sunday, where the Times is passed around section by section and no one will listen to me (or--that's inaccurate--they break from listening to me).

Wednesday's has a "Dining" section (but you knew that), which is nice I guess but...

I've addressed my NY Times problems here before, griped its booming cultural deafness and that. It's like how I started to try to talk to everyone (out here) about my problems with The (present day) South Fork (full of Jill Zarin and Chase Crawford), but realized they'd have to get on my OH MY G_D MANHATTAN (AND PORTIONS OF BROOKLYN WHERE I DON'T LIVE) IS SUCH GARBAGE NOW bandwagon in order to get on my OH MY G_D THE HAMPTONS IS A TRASH BIN bandwagon. It's like that because Times fluff reportage and 'Hamptons Living' are equally certain that New York is especially sofizzticated in exclusion of everybody else, a graceless, elbowing money(and publicity)-brained (Neo-Puritanical?) sofizztication (that is obviously a BATHROOM HAM PARTY [in Pillow parlance]). And my family is a New York one (who reads The Times daily, mostly for the serious bits [non-'Styles'-styled sections]), and I feel guilty for looking askance at whole regions and populations of the place where I was born and now live (but did not grow up...). It can't be helped.

The thing is

on the front of "Dining" there's an article about beer gardens (again), which is mostly about the beer garden at The Standard Hotel (in two lifelike, color reproductions) and then a smattering of BK and L.E.S. visions/versions that run on twee empty—citizen's taste for demi-authenticities, materials run by/through "like-minded folk" (for us by us/slimy, misplaced snobbery for blocks and blocks). I've known about the set-up at The Standard for a cold minute, found it irritating from a remove; but someway, it turned my stomach extra this week.

A few years back (two-ish), when "when will the high line open?!" buzz was peaking, I was totally enchanted by The (near-complete) Standard, which I assumed was a residence. It's damn good-looking in an East German typa' way (and because of that Block-ness and its stilts, made all the more lovely by proximity to the Highway—imagine!). I was feeling Soviet-looks (always have). And I love new buildings in New York; I'm ever-ready to get excited about them (and poo-poo those gnarly, staid architecture critics). However, finding the building was the next in Andre Balasz's line of products (one [Chateau] appropriated, the rest [Mercer, Sunset, Standards] invented) got me icy.

I de-love hotels. Of course I do. I de-hate most (all?) of a generation (90s to now?) of New York hotels, the Boutiques, intended as hipper-than. Hipper-than the old hotels, the great old hotels. In these last decades, in Manhattan, the Boutiques have served to prove (to me, to me) just how combustible the pairing of hipness and luxury is. Time-based industries, like fay-shun, like music, like (um...?) art, can bear, can benefit from, this combustion, can at least re-group, re-coup (and eventually benefit). A hotel, a whole, heavy, slow, solid building, a still-point, an Institution, should be treated as such, should not be conceived on/for a 5-year plan (and a 5-year plan alone).

Luxury is a bulwark. It does shift; Hipness, politics, the Industrial Revolution, the concept of "concepts" have all made our luxuries different from those enjoyed by...17th century Dutch merchants of our same neighborhood. But much (most) is the same between us and them, then and now. Luxury is a matter of fineness (whether hand-worked or brain-worked) and rarity, splendor, comfort, safety and self-aggrandizement (hope for La Futura) in things (furs, gems, impeccable service). How wonderful.

Hipness must move. It is defined by its own rapid pace. It is best "contained" by people; it utterly wrecks places, any standing thing that attempts to capture and hold it. Hipness can be recorded, but those records are subject to phases of unHipness, the pronouncements of the moving, breathing (thankless) Hip.

Hipness cannot build an Institution (to do so is ultimately unHip). People who are Hip, who strive to be Hip, must either rove forever, or, settle down and give up Hipness (Hipness may [likely will] once again return to their doorstep, but then it will, must leave for elsewhere). In settling down, one establishes an earnest set of habits, a personal taste—not Hip taste, the taste that is "to be feared and revered," but personal taste, take it or leave it.

In conceiving a hotel, a house, a post-Youth uniform (an Institution), one honestly (not simply, but honestly) puts forth what one finds beautiful, smart, exciting, appealing, comfortable, memorable, special, good—what one LOVES for life, for afterlife (a legacy of LOVE, permanent affirmations drawn up from History, from Holy places).

****

Ian Schrager is the first stand-out hotelier-developer of "The Boutiques Period" in New York (the boss).

(Of course,) Before hotels, he partnered with Steve Rubell to open Studio 54 in 1977.

Studio was a "perfect nightclub," because it was a progenitor of mucho with a music to match, but mostly because:

it (or its Schrager and Rubell attributed first-era) died at the age of four.

Then (we'll skip Palladium), hotels, The Morgans....everything after—

a style of decorating (luxury) that was heavy, thick, lined...but lacking much detail, stuff

"Sexy" quips like unfrosted glass showers

Fusion foods

Nightclubs everywhere, Nightclubs (and their publicists) that inevitably ran aground before five years were out

When Shrager up and left The Morgans Group in 2005 (whatta lynch-pin year) to start The Ian Shrager Company (and ultimately team with Marriot to brand a Shrager hotel chain), he set upon refurbishing (gutting) The Gramercy Park Hotel with Julian Schnabel as skipper. Oh boy.

This was The Boutique colonizing exactly the sort of great, old (fuddy-duddy) hotel it was borned in opposition to.

I stayed at The Gramercy for a weekend with friends in high school. It was shabby round about. The two lobby bars, one Deco, one 'teens Baroque, were incredible. Handsome, preserved old spaces that weren't treated with the kiddest gloves; they were there to be wandered into, to spend an afternoon anonymous, happy, making one's own way in the funny Old/New...(humid, but I mean it). The guests were mostly budget-conscious Euros. The rooms were musty and dusty pink. Breakfast was served in a sunny, stained "conference room." You could obtain one of several keys to the Park on big fobs from the front desk, which took the traditional dark wood mailboxes and key-compartments as its backdrop. I recall thinking the joint could use a refurbishment, a restoration (but not a bulldozing and [ooof] rebranding).

Two years later I did a friend a favor by showing up to an "event" he was "promoting" at the Sky Bar up top of it. The place was downright seedy. The bar only served screwdrivers. I (mostly my mens) got into an altercation with a young lawyer who had the wrong idea about me. We had to take the service elevator up and down (the other was broke), some 25 sardines. It was fun.

Then it was shuttered.

Then, reopened.

And nothing was recognizable. I had guessed at it in the shuttering phase, but come to see it, I was shocked (and heart-sick) about those lobby bars. They were dunz. They were smoke. There had been no auction, and no attempt to preserve those wallpapers (the best parts). The New Gramercy Park Hotel (and its...slick?...neighboring residences) was like any number of places anywhere else. And that would have been fine (I guess) if it hadn't necessitated the clumsy snuffing of a singular place, a real place (where many far more important scenes than the silly ones I've spun were set)—an Institution.

I've been a little kind in posing just this Hipness+Luxury=Potentially Dangerous Combustion idea. Because, about these hotels (and the stuff of Times fluff), there is nothing I (I) deem Hip. The places are absorbed in efforts toward Hipness, sorting the structures (anarchies) of Hipness. And their effort (try-hard-ing), in-the-money-ness, their Hollywooder pandering make them utterly square (loserly) from inception.

Regardless, as written, the focus on Hip, holding and containing it, makes all goals short-term. There is no Hip long-term. There is only realness (realness!) long-term, an Institution, a still point (a Home!).

****

I had a blissed out afternoon in Midtown with PMC last spring. We started by playing hooky for lunch at The Four Seasons (restaurant, not hotel), an Institution among Institutions (so handsome! and a Dover sole). We (not as an end [the end was cops in Central Park] but as a middle) also had drinks at The Beekman Tower Hotel, on the roof with the U.N. and the Pepsi sign and that (second best to the Verrazano Narrows) 59th St. Bridge. Perhaps, we were flashing Hip (...we were). But none of the places we paused were, which is part of why we were....if Hip must needs move, the Hippest is the Hip that can go secret, soft, lite. The Hip that is a sylph, that is not being mined and drawn out/on and fawned-over by its hosts...

****

Someone told me about how in the 70s and 80s, during The Armory weekend, a few artists (and their representatives) would set up sexy, gypsy booths at a slight distance from the Big Tent, in rooms at The Gramercy Park Hotel, paintings on beds, doors ajar. Just so.

They were visiting, passing Hip, checking in and out.

GWAN A PLAYA—hasta semana siguiente——

**********

Sonny Corinthos (el rey de sexy de daytime)——xoxo

Irresistible Bitch

hold yuh warrior remix is the best song everrrrr (no sh^^)

SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING

POP STAR is a dream-vocation (for us'all).

And in this (fun) moment of young women leading POP (by miles)—Gaga, T. Swift, Be(always, since forever), K. Perry, Ms. Robyn Fenty, Milez...um, Ke$ha—women younger than us, our age, a smidge older—of our era regardless of particulars—having dreamed (and re-dreamed) up our own fantastic careers, costumes, tracks, clurrb tableauxx, videos, magazine interviews, baller boyfriends, vacations, hospitalizations/comebacks, we are critical, sometimes celebratory, sometimes disappointed, always invested. I just mean, we have and will continue to write positive and negative all over all the output of this set of ladies, because they're in transit, doing what we might have done if we could have done and it's exciting and frustrating and engrossing.

So, Katy Perry finally released another single off Teenage Dream, the title track, "Teenage Dream."

I downloaded it last Thursday after watching the Official Lyric Video (which presumably sneak peeks the for reals video) twice through, talking to Pillow about it.

I stayed up and wrote some notes* (under the influence of Jersey Shore's second season premiere). I made a playlist about/around the notes, of the notes. I felt "Teenage Dream" was...joltingly generic, off ritmo with her big-tyme publicity game, her crisp and vivid avatar, and maybe also a lie, muddy/inaccurate, a tin view of actual (morose, animal) teenage dreams.
But I did wake up humming the chorus. Catching is no trifle; creating a simple, original melody that sticks, is communion with the WHOLE HISTORY OF COMMUNE-ICATION, with a kind of miraculous set of habits, rituals, dreams.
This happens with Perry and Gaga, who I have (and I'll get to this) realized are quite similar (and, of course, dissimilar too); I become upset with their lyrical shortcomings and their inauthentic (and, of course, authentic too) surface peddling, but cannot cannot shake their choruses, bridges sometimes, little nuggets of sure POP, dance breaks, anthem pieces, good melodies (and deliveries).
The coming success of "Teenage Dream," as such, as a catchy radio item is settled (factual), thanks in part to co-writer and producer, very important person Max Martin. It's exactly him—big, clean with some rocks. Whatever criticism follows here is sort of peripheral, you know?—not wholly pertinent to the object (like, thingness) of the track, which is potent and persistent, flash, obstinate, as intended.

The lyrics are sloppy (see all previous Perry tracks).
First (first), the line "You think I'm pretty without any make-up on" lays down a grey film of common-ness.....I find that "pretty" people are "pretty" without make-up, as a rule. People who only look "pretty" with make-up on (getting dicey here) are not actually "pretty" people. Is she saying, "You think I'm pretty even though I'm not...or, even though I think I'm not unless I'm wearing make-up..."? LOL whatever. I hate the word "pretty." And the line's parallel to this numbing Youtubes entry (aria of generic-ness), which made the rickety rounds last month.

Then, "Before you met me I was alright, but things were kinda heavy./ You brought me back to life./Now, every February you'll be my valentine." She is saying absolutely NADA with "I was alright but things were kinda heavy." And because of the inexpressive thud of that line, I arrive resentful at the mentions of "lifelessness-to-life" and Valentine's Day that follow.

Then, the chorus: "Let's go all the way tonight./No regrets, just love./We can dance until we die./You and I we'll be young forever./YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE I'M LIVING A TEENAGE DREAM, THE WAY YOU TURN ME ON./I CAN'T SLEEP./LET'S RUN AWAY AND DON'T EVER LOOK BACK, DON'T EVER LOOK BACK/MY HEART STOPS WHEN YOU LOOK AT ME./JUST ONE TOUCH, NOW BABY I BELIEVE THIS IS REAL./SO TAKE A CHANCE AND DON'T EVER LOOK BACK, DON'T EVER LOOK BACK."
I had a waiter at an irritating Carroll Gardens restaurant (you know the one) with tiny tables and chairs and no reservations and cash only and vodka from Long Island. He had a tattoo on his forearm that read, "NEVER EXPLAIN. NEVER APOLOGIZE." A girl at our table asked him about it; he explained that the phrases (demands?) were advice from his Grandma. And I was (am still) appalled. Everyone ought to "EXPLAIN" and "APOLOGIZE" when called upon. How else could we possibly carry on relationships, be citizens, family members? Perry's directive, "No regrets, just love." seems similar to me. How are "lacking regrets" and "loving" held as opposites? Perhaps she means to be speaking in a teen voice here, or just describing how teens haven't regrets because they haven't experience? But experience only helps to conduct one's regret-channel (the source of which runs back to first cognition). My regrets felt more fluttering and immediate when I was a teen (not long, lyrical, flattening like now). But they were constant....like weren't there always enormous missed opportunities to be hysterical about, a party you couldn't go to, an awkward encounter in the halls, a rumor, a total inability to talk to someone about something or anything, nothing. And this notion: love eating your conscience? Love displacing regret? Maybe. I don't know. In my experience, regret is perpetual. And teenage dreams and teenage loves are spun through and through with it.
Also the chant, "DON'T EVER LOOK BACK" is bad news. We need histories, Katy Perry! Explanations! (Apologies!)
Also this: "JUST ONE TOUCH, NOW BABY I BELIEVE THIS IS REAL," is disingenuous to me (to me).

Then, "We drove to Cali and got drunk on the beach./Got a motel room, and built a fort out of sheets./I finally found you, my missing puzzle piece./I'm complete."—(I have said it before and I will say it again) LOL whatever.

I like the last(ish) dance refrain, "I might get your heart racing in my skin-tight jeans/be your teenage dream tonight./Let you put your hands on me in my skin-tight jeans/be your teenage dream tonight." It addresses the demi-concept of the eponymous demi-concept album: Katy Perry on yr bedroom wall, a pin-up, all styling and permissions (YES NO YES NO). And, as a teen, my jeans were stupid tight (and flared!....whiskered!). And "put your hands on me" hints violence (an idea of violence, or violation), which is interesting. And I like the breathy delivery, some of her more strident tones withheld....in the grocery store Sunday morning, I began to wonder why I'm so down on Perry's and Gaga's lyrics, and not Britney's. Britney uses dumb words all the time, and I LOVE it. I'm not ready to sort this out; I just thought it was worth mentioning...

There's this video, an interview with Perry about the writing and recording of "Teenage Dream." Oy.
It's a surprise that the song was recorded in her hometown, Santa Barbara. It's so anonymous, ungrounded, impersonal. "Teenage Dream" is hermetically sealed, and must needs come from a vacuum (**space emergency**!). Even with the tabloid iconography—red carpet costumes and PREPARATIONS FOR BIG IMPENDING IMPORTANT FAMOUS MARRIAGE (is Rihanna really gonna be the maid of honor?), visits to the gym—and all kinds of biography, interviews (this crazy thorough Wikipedia entry)—I get no sense of who Katy Perry is (like, humanly) in any of her songs, and, because the rest is so much hype/smoke/mirrors, I continue to be perplexed and put off by her, in general. This is not a matter of the songwriting process or heavy electronics; many people who sound and work as Perry does totally inhabit their songs, never come off all replaceable like her ("way harsh Tai") on the track.

-----in a/our long-term (?) cultural trajectory (?) hipster was just the tip of the iceberg with its remove, right? with the ice cold distance and disjointedness, unREALness-----

In that Wiki (I think) she mentions swoons over Leo of Romeo+Juliet in '97 as a light reference point for "Teenage Dream," which is funny because the first song I thought of as a proper foil for "Teenage Dream," an example of a spot-on teenage dream song was the Garbage jam off that (MAJOR) soundtrack, "#1 Crush." (And "Lovefool" which is all sugar-sounding but klarly darkdarkness-----Perry mentions (in talk and print) the 70s-then-90s Swede trifecta [ABBA--Ace of Base--The Cardigans] in relation to her new album, and I hear those influences in the production, but she doesn't bring it right, doesn't churn out the cleverness +regret-pangs...)

There must be pathos in a teenage dream, right?

Just a little?

And drahmmzzzzzz, emotional violence.

K. Perry's "Teenage Dream" is more like an adolescent dream.

Okay.

I promised a million words ago that I'd talk about Gaga and Perry. I'm not of a mind to write much longer, but I have to put down how this close inspection of K. Perry's POP (and lock-you-out) has helped me appreciate Gaga much more. She's super-superior as an artist (obv she writes and sings better). When "California Gurls" came out I treated Gaga and Perry as poles. Gaga was darkness. Perry was lightness. I was opting for the lightness. And, in my way, I still am. But Gaga's brand of darkness is coming from such a teen place; it's the realest piece of her THE FAME (MONSTER) how it's teen for-us-by-us music, all angst swagger angst swagger. Perry's brand of lightness un-teens her...?**

Even when the style is spot-on (readable and great), ultimately I feel repelled by both of their avatars, their global marketing schemes that don't come from the heart (of their cities), professional obfuscation. With Gaga it's a matter of too much information—conflicting, confusing, laughing, glazed (Dada). But with Perry it's a matter of blankness; she's so boring, too boring to know, packing the tabula rasa of the uninvested hipster, the shifty irony-pitchman (such politics!). So, Gaga's approach to non-identity identity (however much it irks me, however similarly political and play dumb) is finer than Perry's (which might sorta be an accident or the product of an unconsidered pose).

***************

xo

*teen dreams were DUH GOTHIC

what about debbie harry?!--she just WORE songs, a mannequin---brilliant (gigi sequwnce)

litterally==="come on over"==childrens song====brutal, ANIMAL
wrapped in sugar
jersey shore
infinite realness (served up)
primal ron/ron ron juice-----darkness brothersjersey shore
infinite realness (served up)
primal ron/ron ron juice-----darkness brothers

battle the beat, beat up the beat------this is the dance music tip, no canned euphoria---DUH, IT'S GOTHIC IN THE CLURRRB!!!

**Back in November 2008, I wrote this about her perfecto second single off (the last album) One of the Boys, "Hot N' Cold" (which jamzz on and on):

Now, I have a lot of questions about the MySpace-y world of sexual foolery that Ms. Perry inhabits, but this is not supposed to be such a critical look at her avatar/body of work. Fact is, I'm mad about her second single, "Hot N' Cold," an utter anthem, manufactured for beachside clubs, gay bars, and gymnasiums worldwide. Though unenlightened ideas of masculine/feminine haunt some of the lyrics, the ecstatic pace simulates the giddy, sick preciousness of emotional instability, the delicious tension of opposites, the dumb rush of bad decisions, the time-honored pop musical trope of teenage love (for all ages). How can you help but be charmed by an unabashed, jittery celebration of unhealthy relationships? This must be MONSTROUS en Europa!

...Fascinating! teenage love (for all ages)-----

forever and a day

THIS LIBRO!

Summer Jams, cont'd...

We touched (more than) briefly on summer jams and Ace of Base and Rihanna and La Roux and Zooey Deschanel's little sister and the like. Interestingly enough, shortly after those posts, Dragonette (one of my favorite new bands because they're mine all mine) released this clever little ditty about the summer. From what I gather, it's the only new track on a remix album coming out sometime soon, but I really do dig it because, in the typical style of Dragonette, it's a little pushy and a little obvious and you still tap your foot to it.
My energist pointed out a few months ago that summer and winter are seasons in which you can't really do real "work", you just have to let the powers that be glide you through them. And so I think it's important that a summer jam is easy and breezy and just kind of there. Shit you don't have to think about too much. This one does deliver.

YA BLESSED

This is newly minted 16-yr-old Gossip Girl star turned touring tarty C. Love tribute act, Taylor "TMommzz" Momsen (we like how her band, The Pretty Reckless, sounds). And she's got a pack of Marlboro Lights tucked in her garter belt, a pair of 7-inch shake-junt' stilettos held limply by her side. Perhaps (Perhaps...) there's no more appropriate age at which to full-on stripper-junky-glamour it up (on the Warped Tour!!)--Go TMommzz! The real story here is the newly minted ban on the cigarette descriptor "Light." I imagine many pre-ban packs are still out there, in stock, purchasable. I have yet to see new packaging/marketing solutions...will they simply dissolve the products? Presumably, the endgame for anti-smoking evangelists is a snuffing out of all unique, branded cigarettes, or a cigarette company's ability to control advertising and package design. Like, one day all you'll get are government-issued packs with black lungs and dead fetuses emblazoned across, maybe just skulls and crossbones. Such a pack would look right in the garter belt of a TMommzz. But it's crazy (what we've seen the very last of). There is so much about Marlboro Lights. About all brands and sub-brands of brands of cigs. I no longer smoke, but I remember every single sort (and the particular phase of the package design) I smoked when and where, for what reason (I changed it up frequently---it was soo many styles!). I remember what other people smoked, and why, what each thing might mean, how that changed or remained the same. I didn't have to try to remember this stuff; I just did, because it was that notable.

Emotional tears have special health benefits. Biochemist and "tear expert" Dr. William Frey at the Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis discovered that reflex tears are 98 percent water, whereas emotional tears also contain stress hormones which get excreted from the body through crying. After studying the composition of tears, Dr. Frey found that emotional tears shed these hormones and other toxins which accumulate during stress. Additional studies also suggest that crying stimulates the production of endorphins, our body's natural pain killer and "feel-good" hormones." Interestingly, humans are the only creatures known to shed emotional tears, though it's possible that that elephants and gorillas do too. Other mammals and also salt-water crocodiles produce reflex tears which are protective and lubricating.

ハローキティ

Young women have watched the ups and downs of Aubrey [O'Day] through the years, and they continue to cheer her on. [Oxygen Network is] excited to deliver her story as she battles the issues that resonate with our audience, from self-doubt and body image to an intense desire for success and redemption.

Southern Plastic Surgery Blog

Forget Underwire! Laser Bra Surgery offers “built in” push up for breasts

Over the years, women have tried everything to make their breasts look more lifted– from push up bras, to insertable pads to cosmetic surgery. However, a new laser technique called “Laser Bra Surgery” uses laser technology to give the breasts more permanent lift and support.

Enrique Iglesias stunned the audience at a concert in Las Vegas by grabbing a fan's camera and taking a saucy picture down his trousers.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIMON REX (YOU'VE NEVER LOOKED BETTER [I'M SERIOUS])

dead flowers (sanitation workers)

Alpha's really onto something below, posting such pop-darkness in the middle of the summer. That track, "Love the Way You Lie," is numero uno right naw (on iTunes at least...). And I think it makes sense that July-to-August sounds like house music of Usher, like suffering plus a beat you can dance to. "The (traditional) Summer Song," the unadulterated fiesta and fluff-fun song of 2010 has been "California Gurls," and, to me (to me), though it hasn't shed any of its "(traditional) Summer Song" merits per say, it's just (was always just) too boring to keep with post-4th (the only thrill of it to me [to me] was that one phrase about "the Golden Coast" and that's sort of a scrap). Perry said in 2009 that this album, Teenage Dream, would be "heavily influenced by Ace of Base" (doy). This makes sense, as 90s revival--middle 90s revival (bright, bold prints)--is on blast and K. Perry has (in this flurry of "California Gurls" and Russel Brand-lover press) pushed it harder than most other famous people. We haven't heard the rest of the record yet (won't till late August---the whole thing's been timed so nicely), but this one single we're working with, the "(traditional) Summer Song" does not put me in mind of Ace of Base at all (it's more like, as mentioned last month, The Spice Girls). Ace of Base songs are/were (sometimes Island-inflected) dance narratives about loneliness, religious rebirth, deceit, CRUEL SUMMERS. They weren't self-consciously frothy and comique in the manner of Perry. Self-serious Gaga has aped them well, (legit Goth) Britney Spears has totes channeled them, as have many many many Europeans (before, during, since). Such a Euro, La Roux, whose single "Bulletproof" may have outpaced "California Gurls" at the clurrrbs this month (I'm just postulating), has put out a total album of summer-darkness jams (which are really ALL-SEASON jams, a link between rotty August and barren February). Here's dos de los-----------

"[Rachel Uchitel]'s also set to take a turn on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew...She's got an addiction to pills...[her] appearance will inevitably be a letdown, as she is clearly barred from discussing the specifics of her relationship with Tiger by some private contract or other. On the flip side, we'll finally get to see what that one eyeball of hers does when it is left up to its own devices on-camera."
---nymag.com somewheres

Love (and hate) In This Club

So what happened, gentle reader, at least 6 month ago, was that this dude I knew was bad for me (god we played back and forth how bad we were for each other), he broke my face. A lot. 3 places, to be precise. Orbital, nasal, and facial. Took some surgery, I lit some candles, I dyed my hair. Whatever. Anyway, I listened to A LOT of Rihanna "Rated R" after the situation (klar, with Chris Brown and whatnot).
That said, I fuuuuucccckkking love Rihanna's new joint with Eminem. I have a lot of issues with Marshall (stemming of course from the late 90s and his homophobia that read like a 5 year old pulling his pants down for attention). But this song, it's seriously everything. Maybe it's my own unconscious wishes for something to throw me back into the arms of my attacker (thanks, Heidi Montag, but I'm not going to), maybe it's RiRi's out of this world voice. Maybe I'm just a girl interrupted, blah blah blah...
My friend Buffy was actually the first to tell me about this song. To quote her "it was--y'know with the subject matter and all-- a bit unexpected for Rihanna... but then again, y'know, you try your best to market on it, too, so...."

I'm loving it. (Part three--Regions, Successful Compositions)

The second season of Jersey Shore will premiere any minute now (next week?). It's passage, from odd, low-budget, themed, Real World-modeled house&party show to straight-up phenomenology, has been a pleasure and a surprise. And that "phenomenology" is both the same and different. Like, it was a "meme" and Twitter accounts and paid party appearances and makeovers in magazines, but also, really REAL and HAPPY. That's the cast. The cast is full of friendship. (Also, they are dancers.)
Critically, I'm not coming from a place of mistrust-of or disrespect-for reality programming. It is the lion's share of what I watch, and as I don't believe there is such a thing as "guilty pleasure," I take its actors and creators v. seriously. I'm used to fame-for-fame's sake. I've written here before about Paris Hilton's genius, por ejemplo. There is something so wholesome and enlightening about her (and Kim Kardashian's) work ethic (pushing those perfume portfolios on at least three Continents). It's nuts to me (to me) that folks still portion out "real celebrities" and "fake celebrities," like movie actors and the movies aren't a big WHATEVER right now (except for Zac Efron, Twilight and cartoons). Anyway, Snookie, Pauly, JWoWW, Mike, Ronnie, Sammy, and Vinny are, among those who make a living appearing as themselves, sort of special. Just especially candid, nervy, but nice.

I have previously (privately, publicly) decried the rise of shamelessness in American (Youth) culture. There is something dangerous in the group-mind habituation of "bad boy and girl behavior," or the obsessive uptake and reuptake of avatars. But perhaps, there are two forms of such: "shamelessness" and "unashamedness." Like, "shamelessness" is hubristic and unstable, over-delusional and sort of line-stepping (disruptive). But "unashamedness" is simply a way of not being burdened by self-doubt, of being brave and transparent and CELEBRATORY. I don't know. Advocating shame doesn't sound quite right to me. Personally, I'm mortified by (the prospect of my own) self-promotion (though I don't lack in self-absorption). And I am beginning to think of it as a personal failure, a kind of parochially educated cross to bear (that drives me offside). Self-promotion and Unashamedness are (here we go) essentially American manners, processes. Americans know how to think themselves blessed, how to be certain about their own rectitude or beauty or anything without much angst, like the 'dumb' and 'ease' mentioned in the last part. The Jersey Shore cast derives their glamour and likability from straightforward, unashamed realness, from confidence in their estilo, their avatars (which are like surface souls? wishes and dreams for the self made semi-material?), their paths to success (their belief in the very fact of success...).
Then the clever duality of/in Jersey Shore is like this: the broadcast of the self, like a product, a brand, an idea is a piece of our New World, our Web and stuff (the patriotic eating of television commercials, celebration of Better Brands), while the regionalism, the extreme, charming specificity of this group of Eastern Seaboarders is a piece of our Old New World.

As a Southerner, I have witnessed the slippage of Regional styles (no one talks quite like people's grandmothers anymore, unfortunately), and felt the need to keep whatever of the old, local stuff I could (if only by remembering how some forebears looked and sounded). To 'keep' The Region feels imperative for us now. We must 'keep' a balance between the Universalized and mega- (which, as I've outlined in the first part, are important and embraceable) and the local, regional, personal, small. America must have everything she wants, both ways---down-home and Global (even, Space-y).
Petrova started the conversation (at home, not en blogsite) some months ago about Jersey Shore's success as a regional program, and about her desire for endless, continual regional programming. Shows about everybody, everywhere, ourselves included--as in, "I wonder what's going on in ____ right now..."--And then I was like, "OH WAIT, that's what Youtube was supposed to be about! Right?"

So, I'm loving this exchange of local and super-Global objects and ideas, like the Coors commercials of the first part: from The stylized Rockies to your market, proud, shining, fast, loving, self-loving, lucky (blessed), happy, just a little careless but somehow steady, unashamed. The ads thrive on a benign tension; they are general and specific at once, contradicting themselves so contradicting themselves.

********************

I hate to indulge her attention-trix-ery, but Lady Gaga persists (demands post and repost).
There's this Japanese television interview I found from last summer.....

The way she looks.
But also, the oblique straining toward an Asian audience (as interpreted by an American private schoolgirl)-------all the talk of piano lessons!!!
There's also this embarrassing 106 & Park appearance from the same season, where all reference points are for black audiences-----I worked with Kanye, Jay-Z, "You all must love Beyonce!"

She is reshuffling her product line for this demographic, then that demographic. And she has been successful, has achieved cross-demographic appeal. But how kinda ugly when you stop and pay attention, set one appearance beside another. It's sheisty, condescending, very suit...not (keeping it) REAL.
Gaga is, like any of us 80s babies, a student of The Brand, The Market, The Branding and Marketing. But I feel like the great branding work is in the universal, the image, the sound (the humanity!) that crosses borders without losing its home-country, its regional identity...not this thin maneuvering and shapeshifting...? Right? Gaga comes by her false and uncomfortable regionalism honestly...Manhattan [as opposed to the other 4 boroughs], her homestead, hasn't been a region for some time---what with the turning out of the lower and middle classes, the strict, to-the-letter Capitalism that has no sympathy for history, no sentiment, that tolerates fakes and users, anybody with cabbage...maybe I just hate the theater, butI thought it was worth mentioning that working on this essay has helped me to understand my ultimate resistance to/with Gaga, whose voice and hooks I like so much (because of their glitzy emotionality), who I find endearing as a worker in the way of aforementioned Paris and Kim. She is an overnight icon of "our New World, our Web and stuff (the patriotic eating of television commercials, celebration of Better Brands)," but she pointedly eschews the other half, the realness, our Old New World. There is all kinds of consternating bluster about growing up in "The Upper West Side Arts and Culture District" (pardon?) and being a "dirty L.E.S. Artiste" (barf and bull-----a Dad-subsidized apt. [not that I have a problem with that] above Max Fish is not the look she meant to look for, or meant for us to see) and how "New York" the middle finger is (lol whatever) and how she has been in straight-up Madonna costume all summer. Her regional identity, and, in turn, her whole identity, is stuffed to the gills with affect, because she came from post-'86 Manhattan, the island of affect, of neighborhoods and ways of life dictated by real estate agents and club promoters, defectors from home (the Middle and South), people who often hate (out loud) their native regional identities. Though of course, until two minutes ago, Gaga--née Stefanie Germanotta--was doing something brilliantly regional. She was a guidette (a total compatriot of the Jersey Shore cast). But self-conscious about it. Because Manhattan, unlike Staten Island or Jersey (where most of that cast is from), is full of that affect that must needs degrade the outer-boroughs and regional identities, The Bridge and Tunnel (with callous inattention to the class repercussions of such narrowness and dismissiveness). The second Miss Germanotta saw the way to shed her (perceived unsophisticated) regional self, to become a costumed non-citizen (a "true" Manhattanite), she did, and HOW. So, I see her and I say, "Where's Stephanie?" And The Brand is incomplete, unfinished. It's not a good commercial.

WAY OUT WEST