Girl in a Cage

Waterloo

Well, the GOP famously predicted that health care would be President Obama's "Waterloo."  And David Frum is getting a ton of mileage out of versions of this column, which I've seen in 3 places today.  All of which took me back to 1974, and a plucky Swedish foursome who won the Eurovision Song Contest  with the song "Waterloo."

Readers outside of Europe may not know of this horrible contest, which has produced two good songs in its entire existence:  this one, and Lordi's "Hard Rock Halleluhjah."

Though Lordi perform in latex monster costumes, and the video for "Hard Rock Hallelujah" features undead cheerleaders, it's really a tossup as to which video is more horrifying.  Here's ABBA.  My notes below.

Note the horrible lip-syncing from Anna and Annifrida.  Note Bjorn's horrifying costume and guitar--he kinda looks like he got kicked out of the gay version of KISS.  Okay, the gay-er version of KISS.  Benny, in blue satin shirt with matching feather attached, is the most conservatively attired member of the group. 

Frida, in snakeskin pantsuit, looks remarkably like Lynn Redgrave.  I'm not a hundred percent sure she's not Lynn Redgrave.  I feel kinda  bad for her at the end when the host introduces them and Anna gets the "she's the hot one" roar of approval after Frida gets only polite applause.

Anna's outfit defies all my attempts to describe or joke about it. I leave it to more creative fashion critics in the comments. 

And yet, still, all these years later, a hell of a tune!  And a nice upbeat number to celebrate the passage of health care reform!  It's about freakin' time!

Support Your Favorite Authors

These days, people spend a lot of time predicting the future of publishing.  And some of them are not even parroting the insufferable Seth Godin. 

But as I've said before, nobody knows the future. It's anybody's guess what bookselling and book buying and book writing and book editing and even book criticism are going to look like in five or ten years.

It does look like a pretty sure bet that readers are getting more important than ever in supporting authors.  And, I mean, well, duh, but I don't mean just supporting them by buying the books; I mean supporting them by spreading the word.  Publishers are using their shrinking publicity dollars more and more to plug books they feel sure will be big hits.  I don't condemn them for this--I don't know enough about publicity to know whether this is a good or bad strategy.  

But this puts more of the weight of spreading the word about an author's books on the shoulders of the authors themselves and their fans. 

I still haven't figured out exactly what works for authors, but here are some things that we can all do to support the authors whose work we enjoy.

1.) Be seen reading the books in public.  For me, anyway, if I see two different people on the subway reading the same book, I think "I've gotta check that out!"  I can sometimes disregard recommendations from friends because I know, "oh, he'll read anything," or "He has a fondness for Judaica that I don't share," but when I see a stranger reading something, I often think, "I wonder if this is a cool trend I need to jump on?" 

2.)Tell your friends.  And I mean your electronic friends as well as your actual friends.  So yeah, post a review on amazon or goodreads, put something on your blog or twitter, or even just announce on your facebook status that you're reading a particular book. You might end up having an interesting exchange about books! I also think "becoming a fan" on facebook is a free and painless way to help out.  If the author is shopping a project, you can bet editors will be checking their fan pages to see what the fan base is like, and if you do become a fan, you tell all your facebook friends instantly.  Some authors, ahem, even maintain their own fan pages, so you can really interact with them in a way that won't make you feel intrusive, as some people do when writing fan emails.  (I happen to love getting fan emails, but people often seem kind of sheepish about writing them.)

3.)Ask for the books. This one is particularly tough on me because of my shy and misanthropic nature, but if you don't see the book in the bookstore, go ahead and ask for it.  This is especially helpful in indie bookstores where the buyer actually works in the building.

4.)Check them out of the library.   People frequently apologize to me for "only" checking my books out of the library, but I love it when people check my books out of the library!  Librarians are facing very tight budgets right now, and you can bet they keep close track of which  books circulate and which don't.  They'll be more likely to buy more copies of an author's next book if the current book is circulating.

5.)Interact with the author. While this won't technically help spread the word about a book you like, it will probably help the author to feel like she should write another one.  This is particularly true if the book wasn't a big seller.  Feeling like they're actually reaching real readers who care enough to reach out to them keeps a lot of writers going and motivated to keep writing. 

If you're networking online to any degree at all, you're probably able to ineteract with a lot of people in very little time, and many of them probably care what you have to say.  This makes you a very powerful marketing force--not just for books, but for any business or product you care about.  Or, for that matter, hate.  So please, don't be afraid to flex your muscles on behalf of something you really like! 

Your Tax Dollars At Work

A lot of people object to paying taxes.  I think a lot of the resentment of taxes comes from the idea that I'm paying and someone else is benefiting.  So I thought I'd look at how a typical resident of my state, Massachusetts, enjoys the benefits of taxes.

You wake up in the morning, feeling like P. Diddy.  If the air in your town is not thick with industrial pollutants, you can thank the laws passed and enforced by government employees. Ditto with the water you drink. And you can eat breakfast with relative confidence that the food you're eating is safe to eat because laws and government employees make it so.

Is your aged parent at the breakfast table with you?  If not, it's probably because Social Security has allowed them to retire without facing penury and having to move in with their children. 

Let's go to work!  If you commute via the MBTA, I-90, or Route 1, your commute is  subsidized by tax money, and the money you pay every day doesn't even begin to cover the cost of operating your way in to work. If you commute on 93, 95, 128, or 495, your commute is even more heavily subsidized by tax money, since you're not even paying the nominal usage fees that other commuters pay.  

Did you need a college degree to get your job?  Then it's overwhelmingly likely that you benefited from tax money in the form of grants and loan guarantees.  And even if you didn't, you paid lower tuition because of all the government money your university received.

Does your job involve a high risk of death every day?  If not, you can thank safety regulations passed and enforce by government employees.  If you can work without fear of being fired for your identity rather than your job performance, there are those government regulations again. 

Hop back in your car, which you count on to be relatively safe because of government regulations.  You know you can sue the auto companies if you do have a problem, but of course that court system is also funded by your tax dollars. 

If it's getting late, thank your tax dollars for those streetlights.  Don't forget to return that library book, purchased with your tax money for everyone to share. Are the streets of your town thick with criminals waiting to prey on you?  If not, you can thank law enforcement and, more importantly, education provided by the government using your tax dollars.  Perhaps once you're home, you'd like to surf the internet--created and subsidized by US tax money!  Or perhaps you'd like to watch something other than hardcore pornography on television--you can thank the Federal Communications Commission for your freedom to do that.

You've worked hard all week--you deserve some fun! Perhaps you'd like to take in a sporting event, with extra traffic and security provided courtesy of your tax dollars!   Or, you know, what, why not hop on a plane and fly to a more hospitable climate!  Enjoy the security procedures that help keep your flight terror-free, the safety regulations that make your plane continue to work day after day, and the fact that you can take off and land at all without crashing into another plane, courtesy of the Federal Aviation Administration.

I haven't even touched the biggest use of your tax dollars, which is the United States military.

Just because someone isn't handing you a check every day doesn't mean you're not benefiting, both directly and indirectly, from the taxes you pay. A lot of people talk about freedom as something that would exist if we didn't have taxes.  But most of the freedoms we enjoy in this country are made possible by the fact that we pay taxes.  So quit complaining, pay your taxes, and enjoy your freedom.

Overthinking Pop Music 4: We Are the World

So they remade "We Are the World."  Now, some folks will suggest this is some kind of desecration of a sacred text.  But the original was horrible.  It is the worst of the big 3 benefit songs of the 80's.  Its lyrics are banal and syrupy--absolutely the worst kind of pap pop music has to offer.  Prince was reviled at the time for not taking part, but he contributed a song, "4 The Tears in Your Eyes," to the album, and it's actually really good.  Springsteen's cover of "Trapped" also appears on the We Are the World album, and it's also excellent.  It has to be one of the only albums where the filler is better than the hit single.

But anyway, let's look at the hits and misses of the new version. 

Let's get the two biggest misses out of the way to begin with.  Biggest miss number 1:  including Michael Jackson's vocals on the new versions.  Yes, we have long had the techology for almost anyone to record with the dead.  I don't think it's morally wrong or anything--it's just creepy as shit.  Also it taints this project as a weird sort of Michael Jackson tribute, making it more about him than about Haiti.  (The original was the same way--that project was famous for the "check your egos at the door" sign at the recording studio, but only one performer is filmed by himself in the video, and he's also the only one in full performance costume.  This was definitely always about Michael Jackson's creepy messiah complex, so perhaps it's only fitting that the new version carries on the unseemly tradition.

Biggest miss number 2:  the talent pool.  Hard to do this without sounding like a cranky old man, but here goes:  the only thing that makes the original We Are the World bearable, especially in video form, is the presence of so many titans of popular music.  Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon,Diana Ross, Willie Nelson, and even Lindsey Buckingham--these were all people who had remarkable achievements under their belts. (Lindsey Buckingham wrote all the best songs on what was, up until Thriller, the biggest selling album of all time. So there.)  Yeah, Kim Carnes, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper and John Oates were all there, too, but this new version has a lot more Huey Lewises. Apart from Janet Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Snoop Dogg,  Tony Bennett and L.L. Cool J, this version is pretty much all pop stars of the moment and nobody with any history. (Well, Gladys Knight and Brian Wilson are there too, but they get exactly as much to do as Jeff Bridges.)  And let's face it, even the big names in this one are lightweights compared to the ones in the original.   Maybe we'll all be talking about Nick Jonas and Pink and Lil Wayne in 25 years, or maybe they'll be the Kim Carneses of 2035.  The presence of all those people in the original gave that horrible song an illusion of weight and depth that the new one can't match.

Lesser misses:

The original has people singing "our world, our children" behind the incessant choruses.  The new one says, "our world, God's children."  The "our children" part is one of the only things I like about the original because it implies that we all have some responsibility for each other.  This one passes the buck on to God, which is a nice way to avoid doing anything yourself.

Jamie Foxx imitating Ray Charles.  Tacky.  Not as tacky as dubbing a dead guy's vocals in, but just tacky.

Hits:

The rap.  Ignoring rap entirely was a terrible failure of the original--funny to believe now that rap is as tame, safe, and predictable now as any other kind of pop music, but when the original came out, rap was still considered too dangerous and scary to include in a project like this. (But not in Little Steven's "Sun City."  While Michael and Lionel were snubbing rap, Little Steven had Afrika Bambatta, Run-DMC, and Now, admittedly, it's not much of a rap in this song, but rap is mainstream pop music and certainly deserves a place at the table here. 

Wyclef singing in Haitian throughout.  The English parts are still treacly and awful, but you rarely hear anyone singing in Haitian on pop radio, so this is at least a cool change, even if he's just singing the same pap in a different language.  I really like the way the song ends with him chanting "Haiti."

Jeff Bridges subbing for Dan Ackroyd in the "What the Hell's That Guy Doing There?" role. 

The verdict:  I recommend everyone disconnect their charitable giving from celebrity vanity projects.  

In the meantime, here's Little Steven, Joey Ramone, Peter Garrett, Peter Wolf, Bruce Springsteen, Miles Davis, George Clinton, Run-DMC, Afrika Bambatta, Pete Townshend, Bono, Lou Reed, David Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick, Bob Dylan, Hall and Oates, and somewhere, buried in the mix, even Stiv Bator, with the only completely suck-free celebrity benefit song ever:

Overthinking Pop Music 3: Whatcha Say

Okay, full disclosure:  I just freaking hate this song. I used to think, well, at least the hook is kind of interesting from a lyrical perspective, but that's sampled from Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek," which means this guy, who is, I guess, a singer, doesn't even sing the hook on his own song.  This dude is a little young to be running on fumes, artistically speaking, but there you go.   

For some reason I can't ebmed the video, so here's a link, but be warned:  I couldn't find a version without the stupid Geico ad.  And this is the official video.  Isn't the video an ad for the song?  What the hell is the revenue model here?  Isn't this kind of like a movie trailer having an ad at the beginning?  Or an author's blog having ads for stuff other than his or her books?  (Believe me, I've considered it.)

Okay, every genre has its cliches and conventions, but what the hell is it with the male rappers and R&B singers announcing their names at the beginning of the track?  Is this because every song from the hip hop industrial complex is "Somebody feat. Somebody Else?"  (Either "R&B singer feat. Rapper" or "Rapper feat. R&B singer.") And yet the women don't seem to do this.  Try this sometime:  Just sing out your name.  See how stupid that sounds?  I wonder how Jason Derulo can do this with a straight face.

But on to the fact that this guy comes across as a complete tool in this song:  "I was caught up in her lust."  This guy could teach politicians a thing or two about the non-apology apology.  Apparently his own lust had nothing to do with it. He was just helplessly caught up in someone else's. 

You do have to kind of admire, in a perverse way, the straightforwardly materialistic appeal he makes to his wronged lover here.  Note he does not pledge that he won't cheat again:  he merely says "when I become a star, we'll be livin' so large, I'll do anything for you."  So, basically, stay with me because I am going to make money.  It's contemptible, but kind of refreshingly honest.  I guess any woman that falls for that pretty much deserves the guy. 

Overthinking Pop Music 2: Bed Rock

Here's another song that plays on pop radio every five minutes:

Now, the hook is awesome--just as catchy and irresistible as a pop chorus should be.  (But, I mean, just to be an English teacher here, isn't he kind of damning himself with faint praise?  I can make your bed rock?  Surely if you're boasting of your bedroom skills, the ability to shake the bed is not, you know, all that special.  Something really just about anybody could do.  I'm just saying.)

The verses, though--ugh.  Nas pronounced hip hop dead in 2006 (over an awesome "In A Gadda Da Vida"-based beat), and these clowns are really proving him right.  I like Drake's verse because it's clever and surprising and ends with a punch, and if the sushi roll metaphor is a little off, well, at least he's trying.  The rest of these guys are bringing nothing to the table--dull delivery, dull rhymes--they're basically just killing time until the chorus comes around again. 

Sexual boasting ought to be right in the wheelhouse of any rapper, and most of these guys can't even manage to do that credibly.