Category: Culture

Who’s Number One?

I lost track of popular culture sometime in the 80s, and now I’m permanently stuck with big hair and thin ties.  It’s not that I don’t like contemporary stuff; I do (pick and choose) but I have no idea who does what or even when.  For example, I was shocked to hear Destiny’s Child on my Classic (read — Old Man) Rock Radio station — so I looked it up.  My God! That was 20 years ago!  Anyway, I said all that to say I’m no expert on anything in the 21st century, but that’s not going to stop me from having an opinion.

So…  Last week, YouTube announced that it has a new “Most Watched” music video.  More people have clicked, looked and listened to this 2 minute track than any other song in human history.  It’s “Baby Shark!”  Just when I thought it was safe to finally come out of the closet and admit I actually like “Let it Go,” the mega-annoying tweenie hit from Frozen, apparently, two-year-olds have taken over the world.  (What next?  Womb music?)  Okay, okay, okay!  It’s a phenom: over 7 billion hits is nothing to sneeze at, but there’s a bigger question going on here.  Why is “Baby Shark” even in the conversation?  It’s not real!  It’s a novelty babysitter song for stressed-out parents who need a minute to sneak away and eat a candy bar or have a pee – in peace.  Here’s the deal.  Millions of chubby little fingers tapped this redundant little ditty to Numero Uno in the universe — even though most of those little fingers haven’t even mastered a knife and fork yet.  Unfortunately, that pushed all the good stuff out of the way.  “Despacito” (one of the best videos I’ve seen in years) got knocked off the top spot, and Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” was moved to third.  (BTW, how did that guy become a heartthrob?  Yeah, he can sing, but if he’s sexy, I should have girls lined up around the block — and I’m old.)  Meanwhile, “Uptown Funk” in its original incarnation is 6th and the mighty “Gangnam Style,” the video that started it all (first to one billion!) is now 7th!  My point is, these are all recognizable songs, musical renditions of something — even if it’s only an aging K-Popper leaping around as if he has an unfortunate itch.  Putting “Baby Shark” in that mix is like including Velvet Elvis in the National Portrait Gallery because it’s on so many trailer park walls.  Face it, folks!  Sheer numbers are not always the best way to rank things.

Way back in the day (1958, to be exact) when Perry Como got the world’s first Gold Record for a million sales of “Catch a Falling Star,” that number actually meant something.  It meant people were willing to take the time and trouble to leave the house and go to a record store; and, more importantly, it meant they were willing to shell out some hard coin to take Mr. Como home with them.  That’s a lot different from showing your kid how to click “play” cuz you need time to fold the laundry.  These two should be treated differently.

I understand that a million isn’t what it used to be, and even a billion won’t get you into the top 20 on YouTube.  However, I do think if YouTube wants to be taken seriously, they shouldn’t be rolling out those numbers quite so promiscuously.  Quite frankly, more isn’t preordained to be better.  If you’re using that flawed logic, sheep should be running the show in Australia.  After all, there are 3 times as many of them down there as there are people. 

I Love Commercials

I love commercials.  I think TV ads are cute, little, itty bitty movies.  So it doesn’t bother me that, for the most part, they’re lying to us.  Look, folks!  Like Skyfall, Terminator and Iron Man, they’re fiction!  Sit back and enjoy the show.

The thing that I don’t understand, though, is how TV commercials ever actually SELL anything.  The ads all exist in these weird-ass Never-Never-Land dystopias that can’t be a good idea to showcase the product.  For example:

Household Cleaners – The houses in these ads are filthy.  They’re disgusting.  Who lives there — trolls?  The furniture and floors look the family pet is a buffalo.  The kitchens are the greasiest, greasy combination of greasy-spoon diner and salmonella experiment known to humanity.  And the bathrooms!  OMG!  They’re covered in so much crud Gollum wouldn’t poop in there.  Even the worst hillbillies I know don’t live like that.  If you live in this kind of squalor, you don’t need “Extra-Strength” anything to clean it up; you need a match to burn it down before the Health Department shows up and does it for you.

Feminine Hygiene – Menstruating women are not that happy.  They just aren’t.  And if they do smile, it’s a lot more evil-looking than in the ads.  It’s not a good idea to remind women of this.

Automobiles – Everybody knows the internal combustion engine is a dick to the environment, and car ads prove it.  First, they drive the SUV through a stream, turning the fish habitat into mud pies.  Then, it’s up the mountain, in a 4-wheel-drive rampage to catch the sunset from the summit.  Perfect view!  Except they parked their three tons of automotive junk on a hundred-year-old lichen that just got its endangered species life smeared into the tread of an all-season radial.  Yeah, we’re not destroying our planet fast enough.  I want one of those.

Drugs – I don’t care what wonders the newest wonder drug does, the “side effects” litany scares the hell out of me.  Honestly, “may cause dry mouth, tremors, depression, heart attack, vomiting, internal bleeding, external bleeding, massive bleeding and your tongue’s going fall out” leaves me a little reluctant to try taking it for “occasional arthritis pain.”

Condiments (ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise etc.) – Nobody puts that much mayo on a sandwich.  It’s like they’re painting a barn — with a trowel.  The bread would be slimy, for God’s sake.  And take one bite and you’d have white crap shooting up your nose, down your chin and all over the room.  You’d look like a werewolf who just murdered an albino.

Snack Food – I don’t know anybody who delicately puts one potato chip on their tongue like it’s a communion wafer.  Nor have I ever seen anybody put chocolate in their mouth and suck it to death.  Nobody chews in slow motion, and not one person — ever! — eats just one cookie. Honestly, if people ate snack food like they do in the ads, they wouldn’t eat snack food at all.  why bother?

And finally:

Yogurt – There isn’t a man alive who doesn’t wish some woman would look at him the way all women look at yogurt – in the advertisements.

Originally written – March 2015

Happy Birthday, Kim!

This year, Hallowe’en is going to be different from any other time in living memory.  I know — I’ve had my problems with All Hallow’s Eve recently (It used to be one of my favourite celebrations until it got hijacked by a bunch of nitwits!) but I’m not one to kick somebody when they’re down.  So, rather than taking a few gratuitous shots at a holiday that’s having a hard time, I’ve decided to look elsewhere for something to write about — and I found it!

Once again, Kim Kardashian has gone out of her way to tell you – point blank — just how much she thinks it sucks to be you.  She gave herself a 40th birthday party torn out of the pages of Decadent Weekly.  This particular debauch was held on a private island, and all attendees were tested, quarantined, disinfected, sanitized, sterilized and washed — toes to tonsils — before they were allowed anywhere near the Queen of CyberSleaze.  Kim herself was in fine form, harnessed into a dress specially engineered to make the jiggly bits stand still and to showcase Silicon Valley.  She had enough makeup on that no virus could possibly fight its way through and walked on tottering heels as though she were following an imaginary plow.  (You go, girl!)  Most of the other women had that glazed look of one-too-many shots of Botox (no smiling or you’ll crack the paint!) and the men were, as usual, forgettable.  There were enough “candid” photos to satisfy even the tweeniest of tweens and so many bent-knee poses that I’m certain Barbie was jealous.  And the whole mess was documented on Twitter with a tease that there was more coming soon to a television near you. 

So what’s the big deal?  Just another set of cyber-celebrities strutting their stuff on Twitter – happens every day.  After all, everybody knows that, despite the hype, we’re NOT all in this together, and pandemic or no, rich celebrities are doing rich celebrity stuff all the time.  Ho-hum!  Nor was the backlash anything special.  Calling Kim Kardashian “tone-deaf” is like calling Kim Jong-un a dictator.  The Kardashian crowd doesn’t care what you think.  These are the folks who would recapture Free Willy and turn him into corsets and perfume if they thought it would give them five more minutes on Instagram.  Actually, the closest anyone got to criticism was Colin Hanks’ “Let them eat cake!”  But no, this wasn’t a modern Marie Antoinette, hobbling around a Tahitian Versailles.  It was more Louis XIV meets Wal-Mart.  One suspects the partygoers were drinking Dom Pérignon laced with Red Bull, dining on roast flamingo stuffed with M&Ms and playing Clue with a real murder.  It was all very nouveau gauche without it actually being nouveau anymore.  The festivities were clearly “been there/done that” tired.  And the “inner circle” looked like they were trying way too hard to convince the peasants that tawdry wasn’t a chore. 

In the 21st century, we’ve all seen lavish parties.  George and Amal rented the Grand Canal in Venice, for God’s sake!  A lot of celebrities own their own islands, but the Kardashians still have to rent theirs.  And the ship they’re taking these days has already sailed.  The once mighty Kardashian brand shares the spotlight with a B-list actress from Suits who wants to be the Queen of Southern California; Ellen, the world’s nastiest sycophant; and a pack of snapping rappers.  By Monday, Kimmie’s birthday bash will be all but forgotten.  Kardashian relevance is getting lost in the Social Media conflagration they created, but, more importantly, the Cult of Celebrity is losing its charm.  The world has moved on.