What The Kids Are Eating of the Day: Ruled not good enough by America’s largest fast-food chains, the so-called “pink slime” — meat and meat by-products treated with ammonia — is still A-OK by U.S. Department of Agriculture standards.
It’s loud, but soft all at the same time, and I’m not guessing this will be the first contradiction of the night. She’s saying something, but I can’t quite make it out. It’s 3:00 after a long night at the Disco, and we’re sitting in a favourite corner booth of my local diner. Just as I think it’s my ears ringing which make me feel like I’m going deaf, I’m able to make something out. “Let’s get high,” she croons. Slowly undressing herself in my minds eye as the strings swell and let go, so the only clear line I can hear her say is “We were born to die.”
I was kind of being a little dickish, and I didn’t think anything would happen. Typically when I whip out my enormous… knowledge of unpopular music… online, I’ll follow it up with something using the phrase “very exclusive”, which is a direct lift from Hans Oberlander from the house music station in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Anyway. I just wanted to post a formal retraction, and say that the original article has since been changed, and I’ve apologized to the blogger over on Twitter.
Still, I’ve been making catty comments on the internet since at least 2002 (LJ represent!) and to date I’ve only caught minimal flack.
High5Collective’s first video ever was that one for The Weeknd’s The Morning with those four babes running around in the desert - remember it? Today, eight months later, they bring us another video for one of The Weeknd’s tunes. It’s about a family (dinner) that isn’t as ordinary as you’d expect it to be, set to Montreal off Echoes of Silence. Actually, the theme comes from the “laisse tomber les filles”-line in the song, which is French for “leave the girls alone”.
Foolish blog poster, don’t you know that “Laisse Tomber Les Filles” is a Serge Gainsbourg song? It was covered by April March and used in the ending credits of Death Proof.
Actually, I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it. It’s trop exclusif.
Anyway. In case you don’t have it yet, download the latest Weeknd mixtape on his official website. Also, download the other two as well before you have to “pay for them”.
Well, it’s no surprise that Lana Del Rey has managed to sell a number one record in under a week.
“Oh hi, I didn’t see you there. Let me continue to show off my crotch, nails, lips, hair, and Victorian fainting couch.”
That’s right, and what’s more is that she’s moved more units than the entire UK top 10 combined. Wow. What an accomplishment. Especially when your whole career is based around people either loving or hating you, and walking that line between “legitimacy” and “fraudulence”.
As much as I find her music unremarkable and …ehh…what do you call people who flaunt luxury and privilege in the face of massive debt and poverty?
Ah fuck it, here’s some lyrics.
Money is the anthem Of success So before we go out What’s your address?
I’m your National Anthem God, you’re so handsome Take me to the Hamptons Bugatti Veyron
Normally I’d rail on and on about how over-produced tripe like this is corrupting youth and teaching them to value looks and money over everything else, but they seem to do that anyway.
In case you didn’t know exactly where the Hamptons were. To me, it seems like Orange County East, but I’m Canadian.
However, I have a question: What did everyone expect? I know it’s bad form, but I’ll follow this with another question: Isn’t the entertainment industry perpetually chastised for being all flash and no substance?
I don’t know, I don’t love her. It’s just another slickly produced, slickly marketed, slickly packaged, and sickly-sweet advertising campaign for disposable pop music. The whole ordeal seems like a 21st century version of the used car salesman selling you a gussied-up lemon. You know it’s a lemon. You can tell that he knows it’s a lemon, but by god, you buy it anyway, and you treat it like it’s the most important thing in your life. It becomes your raison d’etre for a while, and then eventually it will blow it’s rad on the freeway and you’ll be stuck there for days, and you’ll curse it for ever appearing in your life.
Now thankfully, no one has to ride in Lana Del Rey. She’s not the most useful means of conveyance, nor would she be particularly fast or reliable, what with her preoccupation with teal booty-shorts and Victorian couches.
I know I have a lot of haterade on here, and typically I’m known to rail on and on about music I hate—I had many words about Katy Perry’s ‘One of the Boys’—but really, how much can I say anymore?
I mean, I saw the SNL performance, read the Pitchfork review, vimeo’d the video (UMG seems to be blocking a lot of the YouTube content in Canada, which is just damn foolish) and I am now dedicating a post on my blog (which is a Tumblr, which is so in right now) to the whole ordeal.
What this is all reminds me of is that episode of South Park where they introduce Towelie and they do a false commercial for it as part of the show. It’s all meant to elicit some kind of reaction.
“Sorry I’m late. I’ve been at the bottom of Matt’s laundry basket for a while. It was wonderful.”
Hell, I’ll even call it what it really is, which is just Agitprop. Unlike it’s 20th century counterpart, this isn’t about getting the target market to react by joining a labour team or donating to a Christian charity to stop leprosy. It’s not even like units sold. It’s really, actually, just about ad impressions and cash flow—-filling the coffers of the rich for another quarter, thus keeping society from complete collapse anon. The chitty-chitty-bang-bang of society chugs on, inexplicably, and the world continues to spin.
So what do we do about it?
Nothing.
I like to think of it as preparation for having a teenaged child. It’s a phase. They’ll grow out of it. They’ll move on to something less-or-equal-or-more irritating, and it’s just a question of waiting it out. I have my music, my headphones, a book, my blog—all of the usual coping mechanisms I use to suppress my annoyance with how shallow and stupid society can be. I have my critical theory to help me decide what I like and what I don’t like, and what’s good and what’s not good.
(FYI, these are not mutually exclusive. I like Katy Perry, but I know she’s not amazing. I don’t like The Gossip, even though they are amazing.)
In the mean time, I know that I have the smug satisfaction of cranking out some writing on a Tuesday morning before I go back to work, while good ol’ El-Dee-Ar is probably sleeping off a hangover and has a press conference this afternoon.
Enjoy your money, Lana. I hope you choose to invest it wisely.
Of course you do. You love reading about my hilarious adventures in and around Ottawa.
The problem, my friends, is that I don’t often have a lot to talk about. So if you want to hear some stories about some things, please, shoot me something via my “ask” box.
Seriously, if you write me something— people who aren’t Tumblr users can do this too— I’ll probably find some way to respond to it. Writing in a vacuum kind of sucks, and I’m trying to make my content more interesting.
In summary: Win your own TL;DR from me. Enter here.