Month: May 2003

Sinfest

• “She’s attacking my whole belief system.”

Superosity

The pop culture references and bizarro non-sequiturs are what make this a favourite of mine.

• “Here I am, at rich kids summer camp.”
• “I thought you said you read my blog!”
• “Reading just words is for lesser beings! Have it adapted into comic book format immediately!”

Achewood

Ray’s been facing off against Little Nephew in a rap battle that puts the ones in 8 Mile to shame. My buddy George would love this — he’s a “math atheist” who doesn’t get “this mixing of numbers and letters stuff”.

• Little nephew write raps dissing algebra.
• Roast Beef thinks Little Nephew’s rhymes are solid.
• “Y’all be like a queer Jack Frost, cold nippin’ at my hose!”
• Rap Battle #1: “Am I being dissed by the brontosaurus of rhyme? / There’s cave art of you freakin’ to Morris Day and the Time!”
• Rap Battle #2: “My fans roll all real in sleek black Escalades! / Your fans be all worried ’bout their D&D trades!”
• Rap Battle #3: The women approach me and whisper ‘bongiorno’ / You’re in your room watching scrambled-up porno!”

I was flipping through the book over breakfast and thought to myself: “Lightweights.”

There’s a lot of stuff I’ll be blogging this weekend. I’ve been busy. Watch this space.

Well, I like my result:

You are an AKMA.

You stand out from the crowd because of deeply held beliefs in the unknown.

You ponder endlessly and treat everyone, even fucknozzles, with respect.

WWAD (what would AKMA do) guides your actions.

What I aspire to become, AKMA already is: the Ferris Bueller of the Blogosphere. Not in the getting-away-with-stuff-sense, but the way he’s regarded by bloggers of every stripe. Here’s the relevant line from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (one of those movies that changed my life), as uttered by Grace, the principal’s secretary:

The sportos, the motorheads, the geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads, they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.

The What Blogging Archetype Are You Most Like test isn’t foolproof. While Doc Searls is “one of the possible results, Doc himself ended up testing positive as AKMA. That’s because they’re both such sweet guys.

Since he has a record deal and I don’t, Weird Al Yankovic — simultaneously high and low point for the visibility of accordion rockers (as the Village People were for gays) — is going to get the credit for coming up with playing Eminem and Avril Lavigne on the squeezebox. In the case of these two particular artists, I broke with my tradition of favouring “straight” versions of songs over parodies, what with turning Eminem’s Cleaning Out My Closet into a song by an open source software defector (warning: painful geek joke ahead):

I’m sorry Stallman

I never mean to hurt you

I never meant to make you cry

But tonight, I’m getting rid of Debian

…and as part of a stand-up routine, I’d rewritten Sk8r Boi into a song about that silly sub-sub-culture of goths who get into terribly silly things: “S8n Boi” by one “Avril LeVey“.

According to this article, Eminem, in typical hip-hop fashion, is taking himself a little too seriously:

Weird Al Yankovic said he held out hope until the last minute that Eminem would allow him to do a video for “Couch Potato,” his new parody based on the rapper’s Oscar-winning hit “Lose Yourself.” Yankovic negotiated with Eminem’s manager, Paul Rosenberg, who relayed Eminem’s permission for Yankovic to record the song–but delayed the decision to make an accompanying video until Eminem heard the final mix of “Couch Potato.”

“What we heard back from him (Rosenberg) was that Eminem was fine with me having the parody on my album but said he was afraid that a Weird Al video might detract from his legacy, that it would somehow make people take him less seriously as an important hip-hop artist,” Yankovic said.

Proof positive that constant self-aggrandizement is really just a mask for fears and insecurities. Surely someone at his record company must know that having a parody made of your songs and videos is a sign that you’ve made it.

Yankovic said even though he didn’t get to make the video, he’s grateful Eminem let him use the song in the first place. “I’m grateful to Eminem; he at least let me put it on the album,” Yankovic said. “I have to say I’m extremely disappointed at the same time; frankly, this was going to be the best video that I’ve ever done.”

Yankovic said that the video would have featured a “patchwork quilt” of scenes from other Eminem videos.

“Couch Potato” is the first single from Poodle Hat, which hits stores on May 20. The album also features parodies of songs by Nelly, Avril Lavigne and Billy Joel.

What? Nelly too? I sometimes drop the chorus from Hot in Here into the middle of another song.

Stupid big-name accordionists, stealing my thunder.

As my friend Eldon (who pointed me to this story) wrote to me: I’ll bet Eminem would’ve let me do the video.

[Mondo thanks, Eldon!]

…ooh, yeah. (Flash required)

In spite of the fact that I’m what you might call a Zen Catholic, whenever I see the phrase “Christian Rock”, I back away slowly and avoid eye contact. I’m sure it’s not the Christian aspect that makes it stink — the Jewish band Black Shabbat isn’t any better, and the Beasties were smart enough to make their track Bodhisattva Vow an instumental.

(Whenever I ask why a kind and loving God doesn’t smite Christian rock bands, someone invariably says “Hey, Sixpence None the Richer are pretty good,” to which I reply, “Name one number they do that isn’t Kiss Me.” Really, the best Christian rock-and-rollahs are not categorized as such — one isn’t even a musician: U2, Moby and filmmaker Kevin Smith.)

Mark Gauvreau Judge agrees with me, and writes about it at length in this article:

I like to think that in the last few years I’ve tried to become a better Christian. I gave up drinking and smoking and staying out all night. Sunday mass is no longer optional. I read the Bible and theology.

But there is one Rubicon I will not, cannot, cross. I will never give up the music I love — rock and roll and jazz — and embrace “Christian” rock.

The great jazz critic Stanley Crouch once gave the best one-line description of great jazz I have ever heard: dealing with despair with grace and dignity. This not only works in the lyrics of great jazz, blues, and pop songs, which are often witty and self-deprecating (for all of Sinatra’s personal bravado, his songs are largely wracked with confusion and fear), but also forms the base of great sound that can elevate the self-pity found in much popular music to something more grand. Sure, a blues musician may adumbrate a life of misery and failure, but in direct contrast to what he is saying, at least if he is B. B. King or another great musician, is that strength, certainty, and inviting warmth of the sound that sustains him — as well as the cleverness with which he tells his sorry tale.

This is the great feat of the best popular music. It creates empathy with the listener but expressing the perils of being human, yet the uplifting sound of the music itself and the charm of the singer points to a kind of perfection, or at least a Christian humility. Dealing with adversity with grace and dignity, indeed.

In virtually all the Christian rock I’ve heard, and in the worst pop music today, this equation is destroyed.

Hear, hear.

Remember, folks, one the best ways to “love thy neighbour” is to rock their asses off.

[Thanks to Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle for pointing this one out.]