Thank You, Oscar Millard

I just found out that a movie called The Conqueror, which is considered by many to be the worst movie of all time, was written by a guy with the last name Millard. Like, it was so bad that most of the cast and crew got cancer from it.

Bodes well for my future screenwriting career.

Trendblog 2009!

The other day I ran across this article on the New York Times website. If you don’t want to click the link which is perfectly understandable, it’s about how every guy under the age of thirty is now dressing really classy. Um, what? That prompted me to start the following two-item list:

The List of New York Times Trends That Weren’t Actual Trends, 2009 Edition

1. Young Men Dressing Up Like Old Men Because of Mad Men

Some bozo at the NYT is convinced that we’re all glued to our TV sets watching Mad Men and that we love the show so hard that we’ve started dressing like Don Draper and Don Draper’s Employees, as I believe they’re called. Don Draper and company, if you were wondering, are the most sartorially superior sons of bitches on earth.

Besides the impeccably dressed Tyler Mills, I can’t really think of anyone who adheres to the Mad Men aesthetic. The notion of every guy in Chapel Hill running around dressed like they’re trying to close a deal with Lucky Strike to have their cigarettes advertised at elementary schools is so preposterous that when I first considered it, I chortled so heartily that in my fit of upper-class amusement I spilled my aged cognac right onto my J. Press herringbone jacket, which then leaked into my Brooks Brothers shirt and damn it all if it didn’t bleed right on through to my Armani slacks, which were made out of the tears of a unicorn that an old British man had hammered into the softest fabric known to man. How did my cognac avoid my tie, you ask? Because I hadn’t put it on yet – I still hadn’t decided whether to tie it in a Half Windsor, Full Windsor, or a Quadruple Windsor (which looks the best but if you do it wrong you explode from all the Bad Fashion Vibes).

Point is, nobody dresses up like it’s Mad Men except for special occasions. Maybe it's just that I don't get it because I live in North Carolina and not New York, The Capital Of All That Is Cultural, Fashionable, And Generally Good, and therefore am not as with it as I should be when it comes to what the kids are wearing these days.

In other news, look at Tyler's rope belt. Isn't that stellar?

2. The Hipster Potbelly

This alludes to the idea that this summer, hipster bros (or “coolsters,” as New York Times called them in an adorably desperate grasp for both an acceptable synonym and a hold on the rapidly shifting parlance of our times) made a conscious effort to cultivate a bit of a potbelly as a fashion statement, and goes on to say that this is (a) a way of rebelling against traditional standards of beauty, and (b) Barack Obama’s fault because he’s so trim.

Now let me be the first to say that I am one of the leading proponents of doing things ironically. But you cannot have an ironic potbelly. That is not a thing. Instead, let me offer an alternate explanation of this “coolster paunch.” Ready?

Hipsters are young. Lots of young people like to drink. If you drink a lot, it will make you fat.

The

End

Merry

Holidays.

My Top Ten of 2009 - With Commentary!

So I’ve been reading the various “Top Albums of 2009” lists (Really, Rolling Stone? Really, Pitchfork?), and I've found them interesting (RS=too interested in canon; Pitchfork=too interested in Pitchfork) but I didn't really find a list that reflected my sensibilities with regards to this year in music. As someone who’s completely unqualified to contribute his own list but who has a blog with a readership possibly in the high twenties, I thought I’d contribute my own “Best of.” Those who saw my WXYC Top 20 list will notice some discrepancies in my order/albums on the list, but that’s because now that exams have ended I’ve finally been able to digest and re-assess a bunch of what came out this year.

I picked stuff out on the basis of a highly scientific formula that tries to take into account mostly what I just personally enjoyed, but also just a little bit what everybody else considered "good." Also I'm only doing ten favorites instead of a loftier amount because I'm lazy. I'd love to hear your top whatever, especially if it's better than mine.

Drumroll, please. . .

10. Wale - Attention Deficit
To me, Wale represents the dialectic in modern hip-hop - it tries to synthesize a thesis (mainstream hip-hop has to change) with the antithesis of that (Cameos by Gucci Mane and Bun B, beats that wouldn't sound out of place on a Jay-Z album, a song with Lady Gaga), and the results are pretty fantastic. Wale tries to fuse the mainstream beats with the go-go sensibilities of his Washington, DC hometown, and raps about stuff that matters to him. Still, this album doesn't entirely feel like Wale's own, and sometimes the Interscope-mandated moves halt the album. A promising debut from a guy who's sure to do better next time around.

Check out: "TV In The Radio (Feat. K'Naan)" - The most unlikely jam every to appear on a hip-hop record released by a mainstream label. Produced by Dave Sitek of TV On The Radio (See what Wale did there? It's a pun!).



9. Discovery - LP
I remembered enjoying this to no end this summer. Vampire Weekend's ace in the hole keyboardist Rotsam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot lead singer Wes Miles deliver some of the brightest Synth-&-B this side of eternity.

Check Out: "I Want You Back" - A sugary jam in its own right, this Jackson 5 cover gained double poignancy upon the death of the King of Pop.



8. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
I'll admit; I slept on this record hard. I listened to it once this summer while running and dismissed it because it was too hard to run to. Months later, I re-listened to this and it was so good that it blew a hole in my mind. If reading music journalists wax technical about 3/2 time signatures and the like kept you away from the album, fear not. I didn't understand what the hell those guys were talking about, either. This album's chock-full of music that's ridiculously easy to get into - songs about Gatorade, boy/girl harmonies, and the whole "Talking Heads if they lived in a commune and were into hip-hop" vibe contribute to one hella-fun album.

Check Out: "Stillness Is The Move" - The song that many thought would break the band mainstream. While it didn't because nobody really gets on the radio without paying for it, this is still the closest an indie rock band's ever gotten to being played on 97.5.



BONUS BONUS BONUS!

This is Solange Knowles (yes, Beyonce's little sister) doing a cover of "Stillness Is The Move" that swaps out the main guitar riff for the one that Dr. Dre sampled for "Xxplosive" off of The Chronic 2001.



7. The XX - XX
The headline: British band sees common ground between Morrissey and Mariah, strikes gold. People keep expressing astonishment that this is the product of four twenty year olds, but as one myself I can totally see how they made this. The New York Times ran this story the other day about how men under twenty-five like to wear suits now. While that's not all that true, this album reflects that sentiment - a bunch of twenty year olds in suits. I wonder if the lead singers are dating. If they broke up that would make them the post-punk Fleetwood Mac.

Check Out: "VCR" - The first "real" song on the album, and probably the best. I dig the bells.



6. The-Dream - Love Vs. Money
Opening with the sound of film being spooled into a projector followed by the sounds of a bed being rocked by people doing it is a perfect metaphor for the rest of the album - music for screwing, but on a cinematic scope. The-Dream and his production team have taken up R. Kelly's crown as R&B's mad geniuses; The-Dream's voice gets multi-tracked to serve as his own heavenly chorus over the most deliciously weird pop music of the year that at times recalls Timbaland, Michael Jackson, and Vampire Weekend (trust me, listen to the vocals on "Right Side Of My Brain") but always retains his distinct sonic identity. He even pulls Lil' Jon out of whatever cave he's been living in for the last track.

Check Out: The two-song suite that is "Love Vs. Money" and "Love Vs. Money Part II" that exemplifies everything The-Dream is about - big choruses, finger snaps, lyrics that don't quite make sense, and drama all over the place. Arena music from 2050.





5. Lee Fields & The Expressions - My World
Who says old people don't make good albums? A genuine soul lifer who's been around since James Brown's heyday, Fields has the voice of an old man and this album is the better for it. He worked with the dudes at Truth & Soul Records to produce an album swelling with emotion, funk and heart. He's got a band called The Expressions, who manage to maintain one foot in the soul bucket at all times while also sounding informed of hip-hop (and to a lesser, although no less important degree, indie rock), which gives these songs a progressive bent that makes them superior to similar recent efforts by Raphael Saadiq and Sharon Jones - unlike those guys, he lived through soul's heyday, so he knows better than to repeat it..

Check Out: "My World Is Empty Without You" - Backed by a heavenly chorus, swelling strings and an actual churchbell, Fields sounds absolutely desperate. But totally in a fun way!




4. Method Man and Redman - Blackout! 2
While it wasn't the best hip-hop or even the best Wu-Tang album of the year, it was definitely the most fun. Hip-Hop's stonedest bff's Method Man and Redman, convinced that 1999's Blackout! was a classic, actually turned in something that's better than the original. Redman, one of the hardest-working dudes in hip-hop (he also A&R'd and mixed the album), again puts his easily adaptable flow and mastery of the verse to use, and Meth is clearly enjoying himself, making it his best effort in years. Most rap duos have one guy who's really zany and another dude who has to reel him in, but Meth and Red both eschew gravitas on this one, making it twice as enjoyable as albums by those other guys.

Check Out: "City Lights (Feat. Bun B)" - The would-be summer jam of 2009, except nobody was into the Wu-Tang Clan again until Raekwon da Chef's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II came out.



3. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Leave it to a bunch of French dudes to master Rock n' Roll. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is probably the most technically accomplished release of any on my list in terms of traditional rock instrumentation, and plus it's got songs about classical music! If that sentence sounded boring, here's all you need to know: this album sounds like The Strokes' first album, but with synths and so many hooks you could build a coat room around it. This album is more than a little wimpy, like it you thumped it with your finger it might cry, but that only makes me like it more.

Check Out: "1901" - I'll admit that I'd never heard of Phoenix until I was hanging out with some friends and this song came on and everybody got up and started dancing in a conga line around my friend's apartment. Or maybe it was "Lisztomania;" I'm not sure. Either way I like this song the best. Please ignore the Cadillac commercial they used this song in.





2. Raekwon da Chef - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Vol. II
People keep comparing this album to The Wire. I've never seen that show, so I'll just compare it to the original Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. It's almost as good as the original, which for 2009 is good enough. Unlike most of the young, hot cats out right now (Lil' Wayne, I'm looking squarely in your direction), Raekwon writes actual songs; he raps from the perspective of a guy who's been working at his job for years and seen it all. Such a guy just so happens to be a crack dealer. He's not interested in writing a hot 16-bar verse - not that he can't crank them out in his sleep, as evidenced by his verse in "House of Flying Daggers" - but is instead more interested in immersing the listener in his world, tossing off details the same way any other good writer does. Check this gem from this song with the completely-to-the-point title "Baggin' Crack:"

Choppin' like a lumberjack up in the gate/One plate, a rock on the table, movin' that flake/Fiends start hittin' my shit/Paranoid, he got the convoy all up in his crib/One n---a sick, fuck it/Let's get this money/Got the razor hid up in my jean jacket

Painted in broad strokes, these are the same ramblings of a jaded middle-manager type - Okay, time check the TPS Reports; Johnson can't make it in, we can settle the account anyway. That's one of the reasons why this album's so great, Raekwon's ability to fully inhabit his persona.

Another reason why this is so great is the production. Rae tapped a murderer's row of ace beatsmiths to provide the album's backing tracks, from the late J. Dilla to Alchemist to RZA to Pete Rock to Marley Marl to Dr. Dre, whose label Aftermath Records was at one point supposed to release this behemoth. Raekwon also pleased the fans by having every living member of the Wu (except U-God because he's not very good) guest on the album, plus a couple of his big-name friends like Jadakiss and Busta Rhymes. Just like the original, Rae includes Ghostface Killah on like half of the tracks on here, providing a frenetic, paranoid foil for Rae's laid-back Boss persona.

Bonus points go to this album for reigniting the public's interest in the Wu-Tang, which had been slowly-but-surely waning ever since Ol' Dirty Bastard was killed by the government for being too real.

Check Out: I couldn't decide which song was the best from this album, so here's two. "House of Flying Daggers (Feat. Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, and Method Man)," which gives you some of that gritty, old-school Wu-Tang feel, and "Catalina (Feat. Lyfe Jennings)," one of them Dr. Dre joints that's so nice it's like Rae's telling his come-up story from atop a velvet mountain.





Oh, what the hell. Here's "10 Bricks," another J. Dilla production that has what might be my favorite beat on the album.



1. Japandroids - Post-Nothing
This edges out Raekwon because they didn't have Dr. Dre's help. These are two dudes from Vancouver who were so excited about the prospect of forming their own band that they started recording before they could recruit a bassist. And this is the most beautiful, unholy racket two people have ever made, accomplished with thundering drum fills, dual lead vocals and more reverb than you can shake a stick at. At first I thought these songs were just a bunch of love songs, but then I saw Japandroids live and realized that most of these songs are about how the guitarist and drummer are best friends.

I'm not sure how to relate the degree to which I love this album. These guys are the number one listened-to group in my iTunes and this disc hasn't left my car's CD rotation since I first acquired it earlier this year. I don't know who to compare them to - though they sound completely familiar, they seem to occupy their own distinct territory within the rock landscape. How about a combination of The White Stripes, Tegan and Sara, My Bloody Valentine and The Hold Steady? Yeah, that works.

Check Out: "Young Hearts Spark Fire" followed by "Wet Hair," what's definitely my favorite one-two punch in recent memory.




So, there you have it. Check back in a couple of days for me talking about an album that I think is way, way overrated (hint: it's that Animal Collective one).

Shaving: The Final Noshemblog

I've got a little story to tell. About ten minutes after I wrote the previous post about how I wasn't shaving, I was playing with my beard and pulled a hair out of it. It was an inch long. I immediately decided to shave, because that's just unreasonable. I snagged my roommate's beard trimmer and went to town. But not before indulging in some creative facial hair sculpting first:


(AKA the Tony Wonder/Guy Who Played In An Alt Rock Band In 1997)

AND:


(AKA the "Hey Guys I Used To Sit In With Fleetwood Mac When John McVie Was In Rehab")

AND:



(A sad little number known only as: Le Sad.)

Noshemblog Day 32: The Day After The Day After Noshemblog

So I kind of lost steam at the end there and ended up only taking my picture every few days, but did you really need to see the minute changes pile up each day? No. And I've had a bunch of papers and stuff all week so it's been hard keeping up with the proverbial Joneses, especially since the Joneses blog every day no matter what.



I'm not sure how I feel about the end of this experiment. On one hand, I most definitely have a beard. On the other hand, the shaggy hair and beard look makes me feel old. On the other other hand, I'm not going to have the twenty minutes or whatever to afford for a shave until I'm done with my finals so the beard stays until the end of school.

Noshemblog Day 29: Almost There.

Just found out I don't have any actual final exams this semester, which means I'll be getting out of Chapel Hill earlier than like everybody else. But on the other hand I'm not going to be a very fun person to be around for the next two weeks. And you bet your ass I won't be shaving.

Noshemblog Day 28

Just finished listening to the new Wale album. It's tremendous.



Also you should check out the band Customers. They're a punk band out of Atlanta and their 7-inch single "Howlin' At The Moon" has been stuck in my head for weeks. Good if you like your guitars loud, your hooks shouty and hooky and your vocals nigh-incomprehensible.

Behind the Sparkle

My friends, I have been through the wilderness. I have been to the top of the mountain, climbed the trees, and I’ve seen the sparkly light. And by that I mean yesterday Russell Kooistra, Kristy Bradshaw and I watched both of the Twilight movies in a row.

For those of you who are unfamiliar – and for those of you who are and want to see me get the plot not exactly quite right because I didn’t pay all that much attention – the basic story of the first two of four installments of the Twilight saga is this: Bella, a seventeen-year-old, beautiful chronic depressive falls in love with Edward Cullen, a stylish, pale, brooding type who looks not unlike a young Stephen Morrissey. But – twist! – Edward is hiding a dark secret. The secret is this: he’s a vampire! Not only that, but he lives with a group of vampire couples who go around town claiming to be a bunch of regular Joe's but are really more like a cuddlier-than-average vampire cult.

Now, the main difficulty of the Edward/Bella pairing is that lest we forget, Edward is a vampire who desperately wants to suck human blood; however, he and his family have trained themselves to only eat the blood of animals. They call themselves “vegetarians,” which is dumb because they’re EATING ANIMALS. If it were up to me, they would call themselves “carnivores” instead of “undead cannibals.” But I don’t make the rules, Stephanie Meyer does. Either way, Edward and Bella are in love so hard you wouldn’t believe it. The movie goes to great pains to prove this by having Edward and Bella stare at each other for about a half an hour.

After playing baseball (yeah, I know) with Edward’s family, Bella gets chased and then kidnapped by a bunch of “bad” vampires and then the good vampires fight the bad vampires and Edward takes Bella to prom. That’s pretty much what happens in the first Twilight.

The next movie, New Moon, begins with Edward unceremoniously dumping Bella in the middle of the forest because Bella got a paper-cut and Edward’s “brother” lost his shit and tried to eat her. In order to save Bella from himself and his way of life, Edward gets the hell out of Dodge (in this case, Dodge is actually Forks, Washington) and goes to Europe to brood for a while. Meanwhile, Bella is depressed to a soundtrack of edgy indie-rock tunes that only the audience can hear, because Bella claims she’s “not into music anymore.” Wait, I thought depressed people listened to indie rock to provide a fitting soundtrack to their unhappiness that nobody can understand? Whatever.

Edward’s vacuum of dreaminess is filled by Jacob, a minor character from the first installment who’s gone from being a cute, scrawny longhair to a muscle-bound jorts enthusiast who seems to be single-handedly waging a war against shirts. Bella, depressed at Edward’s absence and now intent on becoming a thrill-seeker so she can have hallucinations of Edward telling her not to do whatever stupid thing she’s about to do, gets tight with the mechanically adept Jacob and together they build a couple of motorcycles.

It seems that the “motorcycles” function as a metaphor for “friendship,” because Bella and Jacob quickly become best friends. Problem is, Jacob, in a twist absolutely nobody saw coming, is actually a werewolf as well as a pretty decent mechanic. Not only that, he’s nursing a wolf-sized crush on Bella, which introduces this whole love triangle element to the series.

Anyway, Jacob and his fellow shirtless werewolf friends are fighting off the “bad” vampires (as opposed to the Cullens, who have an uneasy peace with the werewolves because they’re “good” vampires). The “bad” vampire is some lady who’s hunting Bella because Edward killed her boyfriend or something like that, and so in order to protect Bella one of the Cullen girls comes back and takes Bella to Italy to find Edward who’s about to expose himself to the world, i.e. commit suicide. When he sees Bella he changes his mind, then he gets in an argument with The Vampires In Charge Of The Other Vampires, which gets solved by Bella promising to become a vampire one day. Then Edward asks Bella to marry him and the movie ends. In the theater when that happened, people were seriously pissed off that they didn’t show Bella’s reaction, though I’ll go out on a limb here and theorize that she responds positively to his proposal.

That’s as far in the series as I’ve gotten. I’ll probably see the next movie (I’m pretty sure it’s called Eclipse?) when it comes out, just because it’s one of those cultural juggernauts like American Idol or Lady Gaga that seem unstoppable so you might as well hitch yourself along for the ride to see what the fuss is all about.

Honestly, I can see Twilight’s appeal. It provides readers with a universe in which they can get caught up in much the same manner that the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings book series did, with its own lexicon and special social classes that suck you in with their little whirlpools of minutiae. I’m not gonna lie, I found myself perking up whenever the movies would pause the progression of the plot to dangle another hint of its self-made vampire mythology in front of me; I probably would have been hella more interested in a two-hour long faux-documentary on Meyer’s version of vampire/werewolf mythology. But I got what I got, so let’s move on.

The other reason for Twilight’s runaway popularity, methinks, is that despite the fact that the series is clearly rooted in the fantastical, it takes great pains to present to the viewer with a set of universals that we can all relate to. For example, take the scene where Bella goes to meet the Cullens for the first time and finds them making Italian food because they assume that because of her name, Bella must be Italian which is all good and well, except Bella ate before she came over because she figured that if the Cullens were vampires they probably weren’t going to be serving food of the non-blood variety. While this scenario is clearly outside the realm of possibility, it perfectly captures the awkwardness and blind exploration of familial faux pas that is meeting a significant other’s family for the first time. And while probably very few people have ever been dating a mesmerizingly beautiful vampire while having their super-buff werewolf best friend be in love with them, tons of people have been in situations where they’re in love with their platonic best friend or have found themselves achingly in love with their platonic best friend. See what I’m getting at here?

A lot has been said about Twilight’s treatment of sex. As we at this point all know, vampire stories are all secretly about sex – the while business with the neck-biting and blood-sucking is a stand-in for gettin’ busy with somebody. Hence the purportedly excellent True Blood, which though I haven’t seen it I’m pretty sure is just about modern-day vampires having lots and lots of sex. Twilight takes this vampirism-as-sex conceit and (pardon the pun) sucks it dry. Bella and Edward can’t get too hot and heavy because if they do, Edward is liable to lose control of himself and bite her neck, either turning her into a vampire or straight-up eating her. Edward doesn’t want to turn Bella into a vampire just yet, because he wants to wait until Bella is perfectly sure she’s ready to make a decision that will affect her entire life. This, in the completely non-heavy-handed world of Twilight, represents abstinence.

Twilight is subtle about this in the way a Tyrannosaurus Rex is subtle or the band KISS is subtle – that is to say, it isn’t. At the end of the first movie, Bella says via voiceover that she doesn’t know when she’ll be ready but one day she will be, and it’s not exactly clear whether she’s talking about being a vampire or having sex with Edward, though it’s probably both. I don’t have any problems with media preaching the virtues of abstinence; I just wish they’d do it without beating everybody in the theater over the head with it.

On the other hand, you’ve got to admire how sexual Twilight manages to be without anybody coming even close to actually having sex. Robert Pattinson’s Edward seems to have mastered the art of staring sensually off into space that can inspire swooning in even the most jaded of thirteen-year-old girls, and in New Moon, Taylor Laughtner’s Jacob spends fairly substantial chunks of his screen time shirtless, giving his diamond-cutter abs ample room to breathe. The first time homeboy took his shirt off, it seemed like somebody had set a bomb filled with gasps and screams off in the theater. This is not unlike when Disney crams the Jonas Brothers into the tightest pants they can possibly fit into and then makes a big to-do about how they wear abstinence rings. The anachronism is remarkable.

From a more technical/story-based standpoint, Twilight is just plain not very good. I can’t say anything about the books because I haven’t read them, but from the vantage point of a media studies and production major, the movies are not structured well at all. I understand the first movie in the saga (God I hate using that word) has a lot of back-story to cover, so I can forgive it for taking an entire hour to get into the central conflict. But there is absolutely no reason that New Moon should commit the same crime.

New Moon tries waaaaay too hard to present itself as a re-hash of Romeo and Juliet. If you couldn’t pick up on this the movie helps you out by including a shot of the book Romeo and Juliet next to Bella on her bed in like the first minute of the movie, and then has Edward say some dialogue from the play about three minutes later. The problem is that New Moon also wants to be a movie about Taylor Laughtner’s abs, which throws a monkey wrench into the entire situation. So New Moon then becomes a movie about star-crossed loves who misunderstand each other and try to see each other and then when they can’t decide to commit suicide interspliced with gratuitous shots of shirtless werewolf bros. Needless to say, this hurts the film.

Additionally, these movies could just be called Longing Gaze: The Movie, because Bella staring at Edward and/or Jacob (BTW I’M TOTES TEAM EDWARD ENOUGH OF THAT INTERLOPER BULLSHIT JACOB!) in silence is what a solid portion of this is about. I realize that the filmmakers had to insert these shots to displace in the substantial dollop of sensuality that goes missing when you can’t show the two principals getting hot and heavy, but while these shots are supposed to play up the romance and drama, they really made Russell and I laugh our asses off. The main offender would have to be the scene after Edward takes Bella to the restaurant and he’s driving her home and instead of making small talk about the weather or the Seahawks or I don’t know HOW EDWARD IS A FUCKING VAMPIRE, they just stare each other down with incredibly intense, pained looks on their faces, which probably isn’t very safe seeing as Edward is driving in the dark and all.

Another beef I had with this movie is how when you hear the term “werewolf” thrown around, you assume you’re going to be getting a certain image – that of a wolf-man. Instead, New Moon features werewolves that just look like regular wolves. I’m still pretty upset about this. I’ve shown my distaste for Twilight’s particular brand of werewolf through the following graphic:



Classic bait and switch.

Having said all that, this is the part of the essay where I become kind of a Twilight apologist. I understand that these movies are not made for me; they are made for The Cult Of Twilight, a very sizable demographic who collectively could probably beat me up if I didn’t take the time to say some nice things.

While both the original Twilight and New Moon are directed like two-hour music videos meant to distract the MTV Generation from the fact that there’s not a lot going on in these movies, there is one sequence in New Moon that worked absolutely perfectly. I’m talking about the scene where (SPOILER ALERT but honestly if you’ve made it this far you probably have either seen the movie or have no plans to or are my teacher. Ali – sorry about completely ignoring the word limit on these blog assignments.) Bella runs through the woods to a cliff and then jumps off of it, although this sequence works mostly because of the fact that it’s tracked by a killer original cut by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, which just furthers my point that the movies are directed like music videos. Still, credit where credit is due.

Another thing to like about these movies is that the teenagers are given room to breathe; when they talk, they sound like actual teenagers instead of the lifeless amalgamations of slang and fashion trends that usually populate movies like this. So whoever wrote this puppy should get a pat on the back.

Even though Bella is obviously beautiful, she isn’t so unimpeachably gorgeous that it’s completely inconceivable that a regular teenage girl could ever hope to look like her – for example, Bella isn’t Britney Spears in her “Hit Me Baby One More Time” prime where she was so ridiculously good-looking that she shouldn’t have logically existed. Instead, Bella looks like the second-hottest girl at your high school if she were really into Death Cab for Cutie, which for a thirteen-year-old girl is a perfectly reachable goal to aspire to. Having OMG ROBERT PATTINSON SO DREAMY court the brunette Bella helps deconstruct the notion that a girl has to be blonde in order to bag herself a hottie. Not to say that we should still be letting our media determine society’s standards of beauty, but if I had a daughter, I’d much rather her want to look like Bella Swan than Britney Spears.

(Many thanks to Kristy for being my guide to the wonderful world of Twilight, as well as Russell, for sitting through both of the movies with me. Also thanks to you if you slogged through this entire thing.)

Oh also here's a picture for the Noshemblog:


Say it! Beard!

Noshemblog Day 25!

I have a column due tomorrow at 8:30, so naturally I'm only getting around to it seven hours before it's due. Anyhoo, here's my face.



My parents actually said that they liked it, which could either mean that it looks good or they love me too much to tell me that I look weird. Either way I'm satisfied with whatever is on my face.

Noshemblog Day 22

Dear E-Diary,

Current E-Status: Bearded!

Currently listening to: "Dizzy Dizzy" by Can



Man, has it really been three weeks? Holy cow. Also I've been listening to Can a lot lately (thanks to Jake my WXYC mentor), and the story behind them is too crazy to actually be real. Their first lead singer was this guy who suffered from a nervous breakdown while performing onstage with the band. The next singer they got was a street performer who sang in a made-up language who decided to quit once he became a Jehovah's Witness. After he left, I think they just let the bassist sing or something.

Anyhoo, here's a really sweet Can song; it's the one that Kanye West sampled for "Drunk and Hot Girls." Is Kanye (MORE LIKE CANYE AMIRITE?) a Can fan or just a rip-off artist?

Nosheblog Day 21!

Today I got my picture taken while I was standing in a tree. And then I watched Zoolander.



This picture is my best attempt at synthesizing those two events.

The Noshemblog Doldrums Vol. 2: The Second Post Today!

Homeboy Ross wanted in the pic, so we had a second photo go-round:



ALSO. I've figured out a mega tip (a "life-hack," if you will) for my fellow Noshemberers to keep their beards from creating a despairing, suicide-inducing itch. Whilst showering, shampoo and condition your face. THIS WORKS, PEOPLE.

Love love,

Drew

The Noshemblog Doldrums

I WANT TO SHAVE SO HARD.



Yesterday morning, I had to clean up the neck-beard a bit in order to look non-homeless (be-homed, if you will) for my internship interview. Turns out I shouldn't had worried about it, because WOO! I got it. Sweet.

Tomorrow I'm going to shampoo and condition my face. Maybe that'll make it feel less prickly and stupid.

Love,

Drew

The Epic Lady Gaga Post

I had originally intended to write a post on Fabolous’ concert at Memorial Hall and how the DTH shat upon it unfairly and probably ruined the show through all the negative press they gave it, but then Lady Gaga came out with a new music video and blew my mind all over my face.

I’ve watched it like eight times now and I just don’t know. Is it genius? Is it completely pointless? Why does she shoot fire out of her chest at the end? IT JUST DOESN”T MAKE SENSE. According to Wikipedia, the video “takes place in a white bathhouse where Gaga is kidnapped by a group of supermodels who drug her and then sell her off to the Russian mafia for sex slavery.” I must admit that that particular reading of the video was lost upon me; I must have gotten distracted by all the jump-cuts and googly eyes. Really, the only conclusion I could possibly draw from viewing the video the first time through was, “This is crazier than a pile of moose shit on coke.”

Watching this video got me to thinking about what I’m going to term the “cult of Gaga,” the idea that not only do people actively enjoy Lady Gaga’s music, but take their fandom further than it’s logically “okay” to do. For example, I have a group of friends who dressed up as Lady Gaga for Halloween, each picking a different Gaga outfit from her various music videos. That's a bit much, in my opinion. But it prompted a hella ton of thought that I can compress into two basic questions.

The aforementioned questions are as follows:

1) Why do people like Lady Gaga so much?

2) What, at the end of the day, is Lady Gaga’s point?

To tackle these brain-busters, let’s think about what Lady Gaga does poorly and what she does well. Gaga is, I will admit, a particularly gifted individual; however, her talents do not lie in the conventional arenas for pop star aptitude. The backing tracks for her songs are unimaginative amalgamations of the electro-pop piffle that dominates pop radio these days, she often sings with the assistance of Autotune to augment her inadequate vocal abilities, her dancing is generally limited to her writhing around while her backup dancers do the real (pardon the pun) legwork, and in the opinion of this blogger her songwriting is not particularly notable*.

The thing is that Lady Gaga realizes all of that is bullshit that doesn’t really matter these days. She understands that in this day and age, the quality of an album or song has little to do with whether it performs well or not. Instead, her skills lie in mythmaking – the ability to convince people that Lady Gaga is worth thinking and talking about.

The persona of Lady Gaga cannot possibly be real, and yet we are supposed to believe that it is. She seems primarily concerned with taking whichever course of action that will elicit the strongest reaction from the public, especially if that reaction is, “What the hell?” To further this aim, Lady Gaga does not break character. Ever.

Plenty of pop stars create personas for themselves that allow them to act in a manner that’s not particularly consistent with their public image – David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Beyonce’s Sasha Fierce, and Garth Brooks’ Chris Gaines immediately jump to mind – but each of these personas are grounded by the assurance that this is not the performer’s true self and instead a character. It seems that Lady Gaga is going for basically the same thing here, except Gaga takes this idea of the performer inhabiting the character and eliminates the base persona. She inhabits the construct of “Lady Gaga” pretty much all the time.

We never hear any news about Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, the name that appears on Gaga’s birth certificate – she gives interviews only as Lady Gaga (for example, once she claimed to an interviewer that bulimia is only a positive thing), and is never photographed by paparazzi in clothing that would be considered “normal,” because Lady Gaga does not wear normal clothes. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta wears normal clothes. But Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta does not go out in public, unlike, say, Britney Spears, who has absolutely zero qualms about being photographed at Rite-Aid while wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and then going onstage at a concert wearing an outfit that looks like it was designed by a perverted schizophrenic. There is an understood separation between “Britney Spears” the performer and Britney Spears the human being. With Lady Gaga, this is not the case. Lady Gaga is Lady Gaga all the time, because she is Lady Gaga.

If my logic seems circular, that’s because it is – a large portion of the Lady Gaga persona is rooted in her bizarre actions that seem arbitrary and pointless. Often these decisions are rooted in fashion, like the time she wore an outfit made completely out of Kermit the Frog heads. From a marketing standpoint, it’s a brilliant move. Because of Gaga’s pervasive media presence and public image, it’s extremely possible for a person to have a fully-formed opinion on Lady Gaga before they’ve heard one of her songs. People are more apt to purchase music from an artist in whom to they have become emotionally invested to the point that they have formulated an opinion about that artist, even if that opinion is negative. That’s just the way human beings work, and this is how Lady Gaga has sold four million albums throughout the world.

It is reductive, however, to assume that Lady Gaga is acting all crazy in just so she can sell records; I would say that Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta lives her life as a piece of performance art designed to “push boundaries” and “shift paradigms.” Certainly, she actively wrestles with sexual mores – she has spoken frankly and openly about her bisexuality, and her songs and music videos often deal with sex, though generally in the “sex as power brokering” sense with less of an emphasis upon the “sex as activity” sense.

At this point, I should probably talk about the whole Lady Gaga bisexual thing. By speaking on her bisexuality, she points to a continuum of sexuality when usually in the arena of pop music we’re dealing with a fairly firm split between gay and straight, which is pretty cool and definitely helps start a conversation about sexuality that needs to happen more often in pop. Additionally, there are debates floating around various corners of the internet (read: celebrity gossip blogs, various YouTube videos) over whether or not Lady Gaga is an intersexual.

Ultimately, whether or not our good friend Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta has both girl parts and boy parts is irrelevant. Her bisexuality and rumors about her gender do enough to position her as an ambassador for the LBTGQ community. Indeed, when she was awarded some random trophy at one of those MTV awards shows that tend to pop up every couple months, she gleefully exclaimed, “This is for God and the gays!” Yelling something like that tends to imply that you represent a group pretty hard.

Anyhoo, Lady Gaga understands that in the arena of pop music, women are often objectified by male performers. She essentially fights fire with fire by turning misogyny on its head and treating men as sexual objects in songs such as “Poker Face” and “Bad Romance.” “Poker Face” can be read as Gaga’s assertion of sexual dominance over a partner**, rendering him putty in her hands because of how awesomely hot and manipulative she is (or something).

Note her use of the word “bitch” self-referentially in the song “Bad Romance.” She refers to herself as a “free bitch” and essentially commands whomever the song is directed at to have sex with her, but she “don’t wanna be friends (Oh)” and will be having nothing to do with the subject of the song beyond the sexual relationship. In this song, the “bitch” has power. The “bitch” is in control. The “bitch” has confident agency over her own sexuality. In the world of Gaga, bitch is what we aim for.

I’m hitting about sixteen hundred words total here, so I think it’s about time wrap this puppy up by talking about her actual music. Now I understand that “taste” is subjective and probably bullshit at the end of the day, so I won’t hate on her music too much and instead put it this way: every one of Gaga’s songs are really big-sounding, dump pop songs that bring little very little that is sonically new to the table. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I leave to you. The point is that it often seems like more thought is being put into the marketing the brand of “Lady Gaga,” between her fashions, music videos, public image, etc. than the actual “music” of Lady Gaga. Which is more important? Does it matter? And if you buy into her image and then convince yourself that you like the music because of the image, then is there even a difference?

*I stand by all the criticism I have levied against her with the exception of “Poker Face.” That shit is fucking unimpeachable and is the aural equivalent of a carnival freakshow, and works precisely because it cultivates a sound as crazy as how Lady Gaga acts.

**Often it’s suggested (and I’m pretty sure this is perpetuated by Lady Gaga herself) that “Poker Face” is really about how L.G. is having sex with some guy while fantasizing about having sex with a girl, but there’s absolutely no way that you could ever draw this conclusion from the lyrics without having been told that this is what the song’s about. In my opinion, this fact renders this particular interpretation moot because you won’t find it unless you know to look for it, and even if you know to look for it, the evidence is pretty weak.

Noshemblog Day 15: Halfway There.

Dad told me to shave my neck-beard because it accentuates my jawline or something. Instead, I think I'm going to opt to join Eric Clapton in the canon of historically significant neck-beards.

Noshemblog Friday the 13th Special!

For tonight's Noshemblog photo, I'm joined by Nolan who's showing some nice red chin hair, which perfectly complements the brown hair on his head.

I hoped that I'd end up looking professorial, but I'm about eighty percent sure that people don't stop to give professors change when they're sitting at bus stops, which is what's been happening to me as of late.

We're all going to a mustache party tonight, and I think that I can safely attend without augmenting my facial hair with a fake mustache. So I guess I've got that to be thankful for.

Noshemblog Day 12: The Triumphant Return of Noshemblog!

Sorry folks, but extenuating circumstances (like the fact that was on campus at 9 and I didn't get home until 1 a.m. last night) kept me from having the time to Noshemblog it up yesterday, so here's today's picture. Again with the sweaters. I really need to spice my outfits up.



Note how grizzly I'm looking. Good thing it's cold or else my face would be sweating pretty much 24/7. My big fear for the rest of the month is that my beard is going to stagnate and instead of filling in, the hairs that I currently house on my face are just going to get longer and longer and I'll end up with the world's weakest beard.

Noshemblog Day 10: Guests!

With me are Ross (left) and Nolan (right), my fellow Noshember-ers.

Note Ross's very European stache/beard combo, and Nolan requested that I point out that the dark stuff on his face is stubble and not in fact dirt.

Logshember Day 9!

I'm almost a third of the way through this non-shaving ordeal, and I'm pleased to say that my face no longer itches.

Note the connecting hairs between the wispy mustache and equally wispy beard. It's all one very effete package.

Noshemblog Day 8

Dear diary,

Current mood: stubbly.

Right now I'm studying for a Drama exam that I have in, oh, twelve hours. But let's analyze the face first. It's definitely looking more beardish, but on the other hand the first thing that Emily Carey said to me when she saw me today was, "Your beard looks stupid."

One thing that this photo-a-day business has taught me is that I need to diversify the type of shirts I wear, because every day I pretty much wear either a button-up collared shirt, a sweater, or a combination of the two.

Millard out.

Day 7 or: AHHH WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO MY FACE???

They might as well call No-Shave November "Don't Even Think About Approaching A Girl Ever Again" November, but that didn't really have as much cache as Noshember.


Note my look of horrified ambiguity upon gazing at my face in Photobooth. Ah, to be young, gifted, and stupid.

Noshemblog Day 6

I just realized that my Noshember might be hitting a snag: After I'd committed to not shaving for a month, I realized that I had an interview for an internship on the 17th. Here is my current beard status:


Now, this leaves me with two options. One, I can hope that I have something on my face that could easily be confused with a beard, so I can just roll with it and go into the interview and pretend I have a beard. Or two, I have to shave that shit. I am not shaving that shit.

The end.

Logshember Day 5

I'll spare the introductions and get straight to updating you on beardwatch '09.

That was a stupid face to decide to make every day for a month but whatever. Today's stubble actually looks less prominent than yesterday's did; however, my upper lip area is more clearly defined and I've managed to grow the little hairs that connect the mustache to the rest of the beard. Sadly, said hairs are only present on the right side of my face as of now.

Tonight's South Park Sucked Rather Interestingly

So tonight's episode of South Park was both (a) unfunny, and (b) simultaneously offensive and didactic. Generally, the "offensive" part isn't that bad as long as the episode is funny enough to throw the offensive content into relief; however, it seems that this season (with the exception of the episode where Butters became a pimp and the montage of Cartman singing "Poker Face), South Park has been struggling to find its footing on the comedic hill, so to speak. Sadly, this season the show has slipped into the realm of needlessly pedantic.

For those of you fortunate enough not to have watched it, here's a quick synopsis: a bunch of motorcycle riders come through South Park, and Stan, Cartman, Kyle, and Kenny do what comes naturally to them - they call them the "F" word (And no, I do not mean the word "fuck," which I feel pretty fucking free to use whenever I fucking please. I mean the word that's an insulting term for a gay person.). The remainder of the episode deals with whether this word's usage is, in this day and age, acceptable when insulting someone for being an inconsiderate douchebag. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are (Surprise! But not really.) decidedly in favor of the word's liberal use, even going so far as to have various characters call each other "F" word approximately one million times throughout the episode.

Um, am I the only one who thinks that this is, like, way not an okay thing? Parker and Stone don't speak from the position of cultural authority that grants them the right to mandate which words our society can and cannot use, especially words that reference groups that they don't represent. Yes, I realize that they run a highly successful TV show, of which I am generally a fan. Yes, I realize that they could give two shits about what I think about the language that they use, and yes, I realize that they've done way worse stuff on the show before. But I'm just saying. They fucked up real big on this one, kids.

What they seem unwilling to acknowledge is that by calling a person a "faggot," even if you're not trying to use the term to attack their sexuality or imply a certain sexuality, you tap into that well of intolerance and injustice that's been spewed against homosexuals throughout history. In a sense, you're taking some of that negativity and directing it in a person's way. So even if you don't mean to insult a person's sexuality, you're using the word's power (which is rooted in being a gay slur) against someone. So Parker and Stone's argument that "faggot" has been used throughout the years to denote myriad objects and concepts and that now its definition might be changing yet again is about three hairs shy of bullshit. No, scratch that. It's pretty much total bullshit.

Another big issue here is the problem of representation. Parker and Stone traffic in making these sweeping statements about the nature of society that they're pretty much zero percent qualified to make. Like with this episode, they're neither gay nor do they represent the gay community in any way, shape, or form. So for them to decide that "faggot" isn't an offensive term to gays is preposterous. It's up to the gay community as a whole to decide whether the word is offensive, and since every single LBGTQ (forgive me if I left a letter of the acronym out) person is never going to reach a consensus on whether it's okay to say that word or not, that means that Matt Stone and Trey Parker should just leave this puppy at the shelter.

Noshlogember! Day 4

So my face now looks like there's mold growing out of it. Shit. Oh well, only twenty-six days to go!
I'm going to try to make the same face for every photo for this Noshlogember, because sometimes you've just got to follow your bliss and tonight my bliss is telling me to look like an idiot on the internet.

Noshember Log: Day 3

Dear Diary,

Current Status: Itchy.

Well friends, it appears that No-Shave November is upon us. Here's my facial hair at it stands:
Note the slight shadow surrounding my face - that's all the facial hair I've managed to churn out at this point. Actually, I started Noshember early due to the fact that I forgot to shave on Halloween, and once November starts, Noshember participants are explicitly prohibited from taking razor to face for the duration of the month, or at least until Christmas music starts being played on the radio. Wish me luck, and if you see me three weeks from now with some sort of abomination on my face, don't look at me like I'm a weirdo.

Weezer + Lil' Wayne = Huh?

I'm pretty sure Weezer has gone completely off the deep end. Off the deep end of awesome! Am I right? Eh, well maybe. The following song has literally no reason to exist. It's a leak off of their new album, hilariously titled Raditude, which, yes, stands for "Radical Attitude."

Anyhoo, in case (okay, when) this Youtube video I linked to is yanked off the internet by the powers that be, this song could be best described as, "What?" It's a song about how Rivers, a self-admitted stone-cold sober Buddhist, can't stop partying. And it's done in a style that, in a move nobody fucking saw coming, splits the difference between Weezer's steadfast rock and the ubiquitous Timbaland-aping synth-n-b that dominates the radio right now.

The main craziest part of the song comes at 2:05 when Lil' Wayne hops in the fray and puts the weirdness of this song perfectly succinctly: "It's Weezer and Weezy, upside-down MTV." I don't even know whether this is good or not. Part of me says it's awesome, and the rest of me says, "Uh, what?" Anyway, here it is:



I have no idea whether this song (which I can only assume is going to be released as a single) is going to be a massive, genre-transcending hit or the the bonehead move that finally kills Weezer in the way that the emo-tastic Make Believe and the Red album could not. A quick trip down Wikipedia lane reveals that Polow da Don (the guy who produced "Throw Some D's" for Rich Boy, which was a pretty big hit in my neck of the woods) produced for the album, as well as, um, Dr. Luke, the Swede who wrote Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone."

Raditude comes out November 3rd. The album cover is to the left. Do with that information what you will.

Hey Kids Here's An Anecdote.

So last night I took a red Sharpie and wrote "Canned Heat!" on my forearm, as I had planned to play that one song of theirs "Going Down to the Country" or something on my radio show this morning at the ungodly hour of 6 am (If you were awake for the show, I thank you dearly. In other words, Thanks Mom!).

I can never sleep well the night before my radio show, because I'm afraid if I drift into too heavy a slumber I won't be able to wake up in time to spin some tunes or whatever the kids are calling it these days (Aside: I have a strong aversion to just bringing my laptop to the radio station, making a playlist on iTunes, plugging it into the soundboard, and then having that be my set. That kind of kills the fun factor of going into WXYC's massive library of records and CD's, finding some random bullshit to put on, and then messing around with transitions, weirdness, volume levels, etc. Also, the term is DISC JOCKEY, and the last time I checked mp3's were zero percent circular except for the fact that they're stored on a disc drive sometimes but that shouldn't count especially since iPods now use flash drives, but I think we can all agree that this is immaterial and tangential tangents should be dismissed as the ramblings of a sleep-deprived bozo who wasn't able to stay that much on topic to begin with.).

Anyhoo, so I went to sleep around 3 am and woke up circa 5:30 (crash is imminent trust me), and went into the station, did my show, and then came back to my humble abode. Just before I went back to bed, I decided to wash my face. And as I washed, I noticed that there's a fairly prominent red "C" in the middle of my forehead, most definitely from having "Canned Heat!" written on my arm and it rubbing onto my face as I slept. Evidently I sleep with my head on my forearm, who knew?

Love,

Drew

The Trials And Adulterations Of David Letterman

By now, I’m sure you’ve gotten wind of the recent David Letterman, um, situation. Basically, what happened was this. Some guy was blackmailing him for two million dollars, saying that he would release evidence that Letterman had been having sex with women who worked for him. So, good old Dave cut this guy off at the pass by going to the police with the entire situation and getting him arrested. He then went on his show and told the world about it. The video for this confession is here:



Now on the surface, what Dave did was pretty noble – he called out an extortionist, and then made a very tough admission that would surely tarnish his public image. But when viewed in terms of its aesthetics, the entire admission is pretty weak.

For one, he delivered this confession in the form of his opening comedy monologue, in which he cracks jokes about finding incriminating evidence in his car at six in the morning and how the fact that he’s had sex at all is pretty shocking, let alone had sex with his employees. The fact that he’s willing to make light of such a terrible situation for all involved parties makes him kind of a crapdude, to use the parlance of our times. The tone of voice in which he tells this story is also notable. He speaks in a jokey, conversational style, indicating that he doesn’t take the situation very seriously.

It’s interesting that up until about 7:33 in the video, Dave is clearly the hero of this story. With a hint of triumph in his voice, he announces that his blackmailer had been arrested that afternoon. After this little moment, he finally cops to having slept with his employees and for about forty seconds, is serious. His gravity is cut short when he says something to the effect of, “Would this be embarrassing if this got out? Yes, yes it would. Especially for the women.” He then ends the segment with a crack about how nobody would expect him to be having sex at all, let alone with women who work for him.

And finally, notice that he never actually apologized for having sex with all of those women, which I’m more than certain he understands to be wrong. It should be noted that a few days later he apologized to his wife, staff, and viewers for putting them all through this and made it explicit that these transgressions are in the past, but that apology carries a lot less weight – like Cat Stevens said, the first cut is the deepest.

The Evolution of Ol' Dirty Chinese Restaurant

When people talk about the Ol’ Dirty Bastard* they usually use terms like “crazy,” “gangsta rapper,” or “Oh my God what the fuck was up with that guy.” However, by saying stuff like this we reduce a fascinating human being to just a few easily dismissed elements - the Ol' Dirty totality was much more than the Ol' Dirty sum of its parts.

Early in his career, ODB functioned as the comic relief of the Wu-Tang Clan, the seminal rap group of which he was a member, and a group so great that if you haven't heard of them you should probably have your citizenship revoked. The Wu was talking about some pretty heavy stuff, so they needed a guy like Dirt McGurt to come in there and lighten things up from time to time. His persona was that of the rampaging id, a guy who had given himself over totally to his basest desires, rapping mainly about sex, drugs and bodily functions. ODB's raps were pretty much totally informed by something called the pleasure principle, which is, um, a principle that drives us to seek pleasure. I don’t have exact figures but I’m pretty sure that roughly eighty-four percent of Dirty’s subject matter had to do with girls, rambling nonsense, poop, or very often some combination of those elements. These topics are often the symbols through which the id manifests itself.

The id is in constant conflict with the superego (which tries to control the id), while the ego is tasked with balancing the id and superego. Check out 2:39 in the video for "Brooklyn Zoo," in which ODB is with his crew. At first, it looks like his buddies are backing him up in case the shit goes down, but it becomes clear that they have to restrain Dirt Dawg because he's not going to be able to contain himself.

The id is often unconscious and acts automatically; it supplies humanity’s impulses and urges, and drives us to create. Check out this video of Dirty kicking a freestyle off the top of his head while zonked out of his mind.

Did you see that! That right there is the very definition of tapping into the id in order to create art. The thing that's absolutely astounding is that ODB recorded like this pretty much all the time during his earlier years. He'd just get wasted, go into the studio, and then ride the beat to greatness.

Sometime in between the release of his debut album Return to the 36 Chambers (The Dirty Version) and his sophomore long-player N---ga Please, it seems that Ason Unique launched a full-on war against rational thought. Choice lines from the album include, "I'll kill all my enemies at birth!" and "You can't use the word 'napkin!'" Behaviorally, he was no less off his rocker. He tried to collect a welfare check while he had the number-one album in the country, interrupted the Grammy's to point out that the Wu-Tang should have beaten Puff Daddy for Best Hip-Hop Album**, and had a guy in his crew with the unfortunate name of Shorty Shitstain. Clearly ODB was out of his goddamned mind.

But what if by outing himself as a crazy person, Big Baby Jesus was actually allowing himself to break free of the structures of society? Consider the video for his and Busta Rhymes' track "Woo-Ha! (Got You All in Check!)"


Busta Bus and Dirt are rapping from inside a padded room, implying that they've been institutionalized and therefore removed from society, rendered as "other." However, it is often from the position of "other" that one has the most power, because society's constraints no longer apply to someone outside that society's structure, freeing them up to innovate now that they're no longer contained within pre-existing boundaries. Dirty's position as other gives him the mobility to break through the structure and turn N---ga Please into a genuinely powerful and challenging work of art, and it's clear that he understands this, even going so far as to state he's "not caught up in your law" on the album's title track.

I'm not going to lie - N---a Please is an extremely difficult album to get through. It takes a while in each song for Ason to actually start rapping, and he actually doesn't appear on one track ("Gettin' High," the track that the aforementioned Shorty Shitstain shows up on) and is almost completely absent from a couple of others. Many of the songs ("I Want P---y" being the main one that comes to mind) are still dealing with satisfying the urges of the id, but the album as a whole completely fucks with the binaries that we think about within the context "black" music and "white" music, destroying the myth that a hip-hop album must have rapping on all the tracks. An easy listening song like "Good Morning Heartache" has no place on a hip-hop record - Dirty's warbling croon sounds like a strung-out Frank Sinatra - and on "I Can't Wait" he's screaming like a hardcore punk singer. Tracks like this would not normally be included on a hip-hop album, but Big Baby Jesus had the license to do whatever he damn well wanted, because he was no longer constrained by the structures of society.

In addition to breaking musical boundaries, this was the period in which Ol' Dirty Bastard was dropping some serious knowledge. On "All in Together Now" he calls himself "A dalmatian. . . I'm white and I'm black. You can't understand it, then fuck you!" Statements like this completely denies that a binary exists between black and white, acknowledging that race is just a societal construct and that we're all amalgamations of various racial influences. Now, the argument can (and probably should) be made that ODB didn't take any of that stuff into consideration when he ad-libbed those lines, but that doesn't matter. Intent is unimportant when considering stuff like this; all that matters is the meanings that can be taken once the song is released.

Besides making vague comments on the nature of race, ODB was also making concrete political statements during this period. In "Ghetto Superstar," his collaboration with Pras of the Fugees and Mya, the basic thesis statement of Dirty's contribution to the song is this:

"The government and upper classes have no idea what's going on at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. My unique position as a gangsta rapper who has been othered by society allows me to both see these problems and comment on them."

I consider this period in Dirty's life his artistic zenith, because a couple years after the release of N---a Please, ODB would be caught up in a tragicomic run of legal troubles, losing himself almost completely to drugs and alcohol. His seemingly magical ability to tap into his id for on-the-spot lyrical inspiration would soon be lost, and he would be forced to depend on ghostwriters for the remainder of his career, before dying a tragic death in 2004. However, as the remaining members of the Wu constantly remind people, the Ol' Dirty Bastard would not have wanted the world to mourn his death, he would have wanted the world to celebrate his life. So when we think of ODB, let's think of his contributions to hip-hop and his evolution to the unique status as an "other," outside of the structures of society, mmkay?

*Also known as Osirus, Dirt McGurt, Dirt Dawg, Ason Unique, The Ol’ Specialist, Big Baby Jesus, Ol’ Dirty Chinese Restaurant, etc. You get the idea.

**Which is true, but that still doesn't make it okay to speak your mind on national television while somebody else is supposed to be receiving an award. As Kanye West recently learned.