Musings on Lady Gaga

I'm not quite as up on pop music as I used to be in my younger years, but I kept hearing Lady Gaga's music on the radio and reading her name bandied about in celebrity magazines--so I got curious. Her songs at first grated on me, but the more I heard them (especially Poker Face and Love Game) I started to love them. I saw her nutty performace on American Idol and was not sure if I thought she was a train wreck or brilliant. Either way, I was intrigued. I picked up an issue of Rolling Stone at the gym and read the cover feature on her, which was pretty fascinating (not an adjective I'd have expected to use). This link is just a slice of the article--the whole piece is worth a read, though, if you see the issue laying around.

Her entire persona, from her music to her fashion choices to the way she markets herself, is one massive piece of performance art. She compares her work to Andy Warhol's, which seems pretty on target (especially if you've read his book Popism). She's calculating, scarily self-aware, and highly ambitious about her career and the specific legacy she wants to leave on the music world. Watching her videos, they look like parodies of other pop starlets' videos but that's not how she intends them to be. You find yourself thinking, she can't be serious with this...but she is dead serious about perfecting the Pop Music Video. They aren't parodies--they are her own style, which has taken the genre to an absurd extreme that comes off as parody but is actually something new. Postmodernism at its best.

I also like this Slate article on her, especially this exerpt:

Gaga's highbrow bibliography and performance-art theatricality are key to this aura-building, but it's to her credit that she doesn't attempt a regal remove from the debased celebrity culture that trampled all over her favorite Mouseketeer. Instead, Gaga dives into the mud and wrestles with it. We see this in the canny way she plays off of the troubled legacy of her '90s teen-pop heroes. Whereas Britney debuted as a towheaded virgin whose career went on to encompass her public deflowering, Gaga debuted already-defiled: "Just Dance" is about stumbling drunkenly around a nightclub and turning your shirt inside out without knowing it. In this way, Gaga wrote her public meltdown into her very first single while remaining a deft guardian of her actual private life—a teasing pre-emptive strike. In "Poker Face," a celebration of mind games and bedroom power plays, and "Paparazzi," which compares love to stalkerish picture-hunting, Gaga plays a girl completely in control and completely comfortable among the dizzying, superficial signifiers of tabloid-era femininity.

Roker 1, Speidi 0

Al Roker is my new hero for actually calling out Spencer and Heidi Pratt's utter and complete ridiculousness and delusions of grandeur re:their own fame and claims that they aren't acting to get attention. It's pretty hilarious and pathetic to watch them try to defend their idiocy as shown on clips from that "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" show that even I, lover of trashy reality tv, refuse to watch. Speidi of course limply attempted to strike back with Heidi playing the victim, but it's just laughable. Really? You don't know who Al Roker is? REALLY? You cried about the label being peeled off your shampoo?? Seriously? If you're acting...well, well done I suppose. If not, just WOW.

Glorious pop trash at its best and worst, and best.

He's Created a Monster!

Nothing says threat to society like amusing roadside art...good thing the fine police force of Raleigh got this NC State Dr. Frankenstein off the street! No word on what happened to Frankenstein's monster. I hope he survived the sting.

Arlington: The Rap

If you've ever spent any time in Arlington (or comparable Northern Virginia suburbs), you'll love this rap ode to the hood. I especially like the homage to the Orange Line of the Metro, a route I grew to know and love-hate during my summers spent in Nova and DC. And the Stabucks, the Starbucks, the Starbucks, the Starbucks...

Thanks to Geeps, my favorite Arlington resident, for the link.

Zack Attack

Yes, yes, I know...this was all over the internet today, so everyone and their brother has seen it, but I can't resist posting it on the slight chance that one of my dear readers has NOT experienced this joyful nine minutes of nostalgia.

Watch Mark Paul Gosselar appear on Jimmy Fallon's new show in character as Zack Morris. We learn several things from this:

1) Zack Morris is not only cooler than Jimmy Fallon (obviously. Zack is cooler than 99% of people and Jimmy Fallon doesn't exactly set the bar high), but he's much funnier. I know the point of this was for him to steal the segment, but he does so a liiiittle too well.

2) Great stage makeup (with copious amounts of bronzer) really can erase 20 years.

3) While the Zack Attack had a great song in "Friends Forever," what we really need is a performance from "Hot Fudge Sundae."

4) Gosselar's new show "Raising the Bar" probably saw strong ratings for the premiere based on that segment. I kind of feel obligated to watch next week simply to thank Gosselar for making my afternoon. Plus, it also has Gloria Reuben who played Jeanie on "ER" and Jane Kaczmarek from "Malcolm in the Middle." Oh, who am I kidding---I'll wait till it comes out on Netflix.

Worst. Advice. Ever. Srsly.

On a much lighter note than yesterday's post, here's a funny compilation of the absolute worst, cheesiest, schmaltziest, moronic-er-est, most cringe-worthy advice tidbits from those terrible 6.99 books you find in the bargain bin at the bookstore or in gas station checkout lines. This blogger claims he read 24, 504 of these gems (tidbits that is, not complete books)--whether or not he's exaggerating, he clearly read more than any human could be expected to withstand without vomiting on his or her shoes. I tried to pick out a few of the funniest, but I gave up because the list was too long, so read for yourself.

Note: this picture has nothing to do with the post, but it's my favorite LOLcat, and I think that's as good a reason as any. I also recognize that some people feel as much hatred for LOLcats as this dude blogger does for cheap advice books, but I happen to LURV LOLcats. They are soooo six months ago and stupid and overdone...and they make me laugh every time. So there.

Late-Term Abortions

So admittedly this is not the cheeriest of posts, which I'm sure you gathered from the heading. This article was linked from CNN, so you may have already seen it, but if not it is REALLY worth a close read. If I had to choose, I would have to call myself pro-choice over pro-life (I hate those terms, don't you??), but I am and have always been deeply conflicted about the question of abortion. Late-term abortions, however, always seemed in my head like a much more straightforward issue: if the mother's health is not in danger, aborting a late-term child who could survive on his or her own is not something society should support. Seems simple (a word entirely inappropriate to the issue of abortion, I realize).

A heartbreaking situation like this woman's however, is not something I'd ever thought of. It's horrifying. What she does, though, is take her personal tragedy and force people like me, who too easily draw the line on late-term abortions despite being minimally informed, to understand that late-term abortions are perhaps infinitely MORE complicated and difficult an issue than abortions in earlier trimesters. This article has stayed with me for several days since I read it, and it will do the same to you, I promise. It's very sad, uncomfortable, and painful, but very very VERY important to read. Bravo to Lynda Waddington for writing this.