God Luh'Me, I Like What I Like

A couple weekends ago, on Record Store Day, Wade, Robin and I went down to our best local vinyl shop—rainy, early—to add to our collections and do a little hipster-watching. One of the cooler items, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, was a Lady Gaga picture 12-inch, with her big thorny face covering the grooves. It’s a nice move on her part; Lady Gaga isn’t exactly the kind of music most people would think of on Record Store Day, which leans toward alternative and classic rock. But, in the current pop landscape, the most visual of artists should put her stamp on the most visual of formats, and there was nothing more striking for sale that day. Lady Gaga currently sports horns that protrude through her skin, near her temples and cheekbones. She looks like that Giger image of Debbie Harry,

with screws holding her head together (or splitting it apart). Lady Gaga always looks like someone’s image of something. I didn’t buy it. None of us did, and for only one reason: We don’t listen to her music. Robin claims to never have heard a Lady Gaga song at all (without being asked, Your Honor). Wade always says, “Is this Lady Gaga?” whenever a female voice is playing at the wings place. It’s always, every single time, Fergie. I recognize Lady Gaga’s voice by now (she does the “er/ah” switch so many pop singers do, which has them revealing how much they lerve you), even though I don’t know a few of her big songs because I’ve watched the videos, but with the sound down. I figure it’s my duty to keep up with pop culture. The Pope and Bill O’Reilly are pissed about something new in pop culture every other day; trust me, there’s a curve for this sort of thing, and you want those two behind you. Besides, if I saw Avatar, Terminator 4 and Sherlock Holmes on opening weekend, then setting aside three YouTube minutes for the latest in sacrilegious dance music bucktoothery is no big deal. There was a guy a few people ahead of us in line. Your typical younger Record Store Day attendee: hoodie, Chucks, stack of vinyl under one arm. He rushed back and asked if he could reach between us to grab one more thing. Robin and I parted, as he slipped in, grabbed Gaga, and added her to his stash. He turned to me, and said, “This is for my wife. She likes this crap. Not me. I don’t even know what this sounds like.” Obviously, we made fun of that guy for about an hour. We get it. You want to buy something you find shameful, so you make excuses. It’s why there are batteries and gum at the checkout in a drug store. It’s why they bring you carrots and celery with Buffalo wings. It’s why he bought most of the other things he bought. It’s why he separated from his friends in line. It’s the origin of his pretend wife. It’s why hipster indie bands do slowed-down covers of pop hits. His guilty pleasure was the main attraction, and he loaded up on stuff the rest of us approved of so he could feel not just accepted by us, but better than Lady Gaga, who he thinks is stupid, and who no one listens to, especially not that guy, that’s for sure. You know it’s the thing he wanted the most, right? And that he probably ended up spending around a hundred dollars, just to get the awesome Lady Gaga picture record that only had one song on each side. If he’d said nothing, I’d have forgotten him a few seconds later. But he made dumb excuses, and now he’s somebody: an idiot cautionary tale, who’s also, it should be said, good for the economy. Get over yourself. Listen to your pop music, watch Jackass, read a comic book. Don’t make me say “Keep it real”. I’d hate to change things between us, and nothing changes a friendship faster than someone saying “Keep it real”.

I’ve learned to appreciate pop music. You really only need three or four chords, a computer, a pretty girl (or even not that pretty. Pop music, from its earliest days, is littered with girls who are more cute than hot, and only in the short term), or a guy who can dance (and not even that well. Like the just-cute girls, a guy who can sort of dance is always looked at as gifted simply because he’s trying at all. The test? A good pop dancer gets up from splits without using his hands. Rule I just made up.)  My favorite album from 2010 was Brothers, by the Black Keys, which is bluesy, tough, badass music that is also bursting with pop hooks I might not recognize were I too cool to check out music others might deem too easily digestible. That guy who bought the Gaga vinyl? Minus his barricade of guilty pleasure bullshit, he probably has pretty good taste in music. He’d have some insight into the more alternative stuff he listens to, because he can counter it with pop. It’s like how you know when you’re having a really good burger, because you’ve also had a McDonald’s burger. (Which makes you, somehow, appreciate both more). That guy fucked up. He could have made some friends! Come on, we’re awesome. We got beers and talked about music all day. Dude is missing out. Besides, what else is there to talk about? My friend Jeff pleads ignorance at anything occurring in the pop realm. One time I showed him a magazine cover featuring Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson, and asked “Hey, who’s your favorite?” Obviously it was meant in jest, and I figured he’d have a funny comeback. His response: “Am I supposed to know these people?” When I named them, he said “I got nothing.” There’s nothing to be gained from that. I knew he didn’t like any of them. No one does. I took away not a feeling that Jeff was smart and witty, but that he’s not participating in his culture in a fun or valuable way. How does he know the good things if he doesn’t know the bad things too? It wouldn’t suck so much that Nicolas Cage makes shitty movies now if he hadn’t been in Adaptation and Raising Arizona, right?

If someone tells me a movie is “so bad it’s good” or “just for fun” I hear: “This is a movie I liked, and I’m gauging your reaction before continuing the conversation.” That sounds awful. A bad movie you didn’t like is a bad movie. A bad movie you liked? That’s a good movie! You’re killing me with that shit. I’ve been trying to work my way through the Criterion Collection, which is of course full of foreign, art-house, experimental, influential films. Even the ones I don’t quite like or understand still resonate with me, showing me influences on modern directors I love and thought I knew completely. Anyone looking for a glimpse into the true nature of the struggles and celebrations of the past hundred years, who has more than a pop song’s length to spare, should check out those movies. It’s a lesson in film as history and vice versa. They’re all brilliant, but I haven’t seen a single one that I wouldn’t turn off if I found out My Cousin Vinny was on the opposite channel. Because that shit is fantastic and I’ll admit it in any mix of company you can drop me in. I could talk about Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny for days. All the criticism of her Oscar win is just snobbery against comedy. I love it, and her, and if there was a Criterion edition of My Cousin Vinny (there never will be. Ever. Never ever.), I’d buy it at midnight the day of release, and I’d reach between Will Forte and Kristin Wiig* to get it off the shelf.

*Odd choices of hipster snobs to hypothetically judge me for loving My Cousin Vinny, I realize. But, I listened to these two deliver an Itunes Celebrity Playlist Podcast, and it was such a self-apologetic, we-want-you-to-find-us-cool display, I could barely make it through the entire thing. Each song was introduced with either a mea culpa over getting into a favorite band so long after other people had heard of them, or an over-compensating life-defining testament of like, the time Pavement was heard in that hallway and what if, WHAT IF, it hadn’t been? What band would you be into then? “I came into Band of Horses late in the game.” So? I still think they’re funny, and I’m sure they’re lovely people, but if the stars of McGruber are cautiously revealing their taste, then I think it’s safe to say we all need to relax the fuck up.

The Criterion Collection? That esteemed group of auteur cinema? I’ve watched about fifty so far. You know what else I’ve watched during the same time period? Every episode of Jersey Shore. I made fun of it before I’d ever seen an episode, and still do. It’s impossible not to mock, but until I’d seen the actual show, I had no context. It was just my usual, incredulous superiority about Reality TV (incredulous superiority is maybe my true guilty pleasure). Once I’d seen Jersey Shore, however, my mocking became more playful, more gentle-spirited. The plot of Jersey Shore is this: Half a dozen people live in this big house together. They’re questionably in their twenties (a few of them have eternally youthful paintings of themselves hidden in closets, while they suffer the human wear and tear outside). They talk in thick, stereotypical New York/New Jersey accents. They’re too tan. They like to party, drink, fight and hook up. It’s basically Entourage, at a discount. I watched Entourage for four seasons, the height of drama being events like Turtle having to take a driving test, or Vinnie choosing between dozens of black t-shirts. Jersey Shore is Entourage for people who wish Turtle got punched in the face more often. People like me. The old me, and some of you, would deny watching Jersey Shore, or would defend that activity as camp or ridicule, even though watching Entourage was never anything anyone had to defend. I genuinely like Jersey Shore. I think the characters are funny, and their celebration of life is undeniable. They dance every chance they get, eat huge meals together like a family, and are somehow simultaneously self-deprecating and over-confident. My friends constantly recommend sitcoms to me that fill their scripts with lazy, retro, pop culture references. Jersey Shore is its own retro pop culture reference, shown in real time. It would give Andy Warhol a happiness-induced stress nosebleed. But, the best, most important thing about Jersey Shore is this: It’s killing Paris Hilton.

All this time we’ve been complaining that Paris Hilton’s fame is owed to nothing more than being born rich. She started with that base and got herself on red carpets, movie sets, talk show couches and even the mike in a recording studio. She’s awful at all of it; even her poses in photographs are poorly-executed, and she can’t seem to decide on a speaking voice. Paris has the ultimate sense of entitlement, comparing herself to Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, and I dunno, whatever racist home-porn model inspired the other reason she’s famous. I can usually be counted on to defend celebrities when my friends point out physical flaws, but I’m quiet when Paris Hilton comes up, because she is ugly where it counts (the outside. It’s the only thing that matters to Paris Hilton, so I figure hit her where it hurts). I bet it blows her mind that Jersey Shore’s Snooki and JWoww get into the good clubs now, that Snooki made the cover of Rolling Stone, that she’s distinctive enough to be parodied on SNL, and that she’s already famous enough to go by one name. Paris Hilton is such a bland blank slate, like a Vanna White we’ve seen give a night-vision blowjob, that she’s virtually unmemorable. Once she’s gone for good, off being terrible to the help or whatever, off camera, you’ll have a hard time giving an accurate description of her. And Paris Hilton will never be known by just one name; the phrase “Paris Hilton is a cunt” has already caught on.  Snooki doesn’t have that problem.  My favorite comedies are 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, but the funniest thing I’ve heard on TV the past couple years was DJ Pauly D on Jersey Shore, lamenting the tension in his house, “I’m young, I just wanna go ride some rides. God luh-me, it’s summah.” For a week last month, my desktop was a photo of Pauly D at a basketball game sitting by Chloe Sevigny. Of the two, Sevigny is way more likely to buy a bunch of records she doesn’t want, to conceal the one she does. Maybe Pauly D can teach her for me, and then she’ll speak to the ironic masses? My hope is that their friendship is genuine, because it proves my fantasy of the high and low worlds coexisting.  I hope it isn’t out of sarcasm, like PBR, or white sunglasses or a thrifted t-shirt. Plus, Sevigny being friends with Pauly D increases her chances of being punched by JWoww. On that day, a breach will open between cultures, and having lived on both sides, I’ll be the one with all the power. On that day, I’ll be king.

And you’ll all be sorry. At least on trivia night.

Comments

[qtip]

Pavement!! Cut your hair!! Keep, keeping it real bro!!