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

HAPPY BASTILLE DAY (RACIST PRICKS)

R.I.P.----

Obit.


But how do you thank someone, who has taken you from crayons to perfume?...

...If you wanted the sky I would write across the sky in letters,
That would soar a thousand feet high,
To Sir, with Love.