Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal contains an interesting piece about how music videos are undergoing a reinvention. Here’s the story. You’ll note several videos featured that I’ve embedded into this blog in recent years, including Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” a superb video that famously features Christopher Walken performing a gravity-defying dance throughout a hotel, and the new interactive Devo video, which allows viewers to determine the shots and click to buy featured products, which I wrote about here. (Rebecca Black gets no mention.)
The form is evolving and so is the distribution method. Yes, almost 30 years ago, my generation was glued to MTV daily in search of the latest great new music video. They were for the most part brief and memorable. I still don’t like Van Halen, but “Hot for Teacher” remains stapled to my consciousness thanks to the video, and I just wish I could cease mentally seeing Steven Tyler opining about love in an elevator. (Shudder.) When MTV transitioned into faux-reality programming for teenagers underburdened by things to do, my generation drifted away. Smart move on MTV’s part in its search to remain relevant to a younger demographic. Forty-somethings still have music videos, but now we find them on YouTube, and we find them there via Facebook. I’m glad these sometimes brilliant little musical vignettes still get produced, and I look forward to new examples that will help pave over “Love in an Elevator.”
I’ve alerted my niece and every other person I know with appropriately aged children (3 to 103). Invariably, they’ve said something like, “You’re just trying to get more kids hooked on comic books.” It’s good to understood.
I read a lot: newspapers, books, the internet, magazines, labels, you name it. As terrifying as I find, say, the chemical composition of whatever that is that Taco Bell is serving, nothing that I’ve read recently has alarmed me as much as this piece I’m going to link to in the next sentence. That’s because, if you didn’t like what you saw with the Great American Recession, hang on, ’cause here’s what happens if Congress doesn’t lift the debt ceiling. The Recession was merely the warmup; imagine the government failing to pay its vendors — i.e., U.S. businesses — and those businesses failing to pay their vendors, and those vendors and everyone above them in the food chain performing massive layoffs. How long do we have before this scenario starts to play out? About two weeks.
But wait, there’s more.
That particular problem has a solution: a Congressional vote to increase the debt ceiling. That buys us more than two weeks. But it in no way addresses the actual problem — that most days, the U.S. Treasury takes in far less money than it needs to fund government operations. We’re all aware of this deficit, at least theoretically. But when you look at actual numbers, it gains a new cogency. Here goes:
On Monday, it took in almost $26 billion, but on Tuesday it took in less than $4 billion. Through Tuesday, the Treasury has received a little less than $1.3 trillion in taxes for fiscal year 2011, but has made payments of almost $7 trillion. The reason the payment number is so large is because it includes funds that were paid to Treasury’s lenders, whose securities matured and needed to be paid off. …
… But of course, because the federal government runs a budget deficit, the Treasury must borrow a little more on most days. On Monday, there was a net increase in Treasury borrowing of $33 billion, on Tuesday the increase was $11 billion. This is how much the national debt increased on those days. As of May 3, the total amount of debt outstanding was $14,280,140,000 and the debt limit is $14,294,000,000.
Yikes. Reading this made me want to run home to our secret hiding place and cash in every U.S. savings bond and treasury note we have. (Which, of course, would only exacerbate this problem. So please: If you own bonds or notes, please stop reading this now and don’t do what I may well do.) The looming debt limit is a cashflow problem that can be addressed; the deficit is the credit card that we’ve charged into oblivion and now can’t make the payments on.
Who is responsible for this? Well, all of us. We want more benefits, but we don’t want to pay for them. We want massive tax cuts and deductions, but we don’t want reduced services. It’s become the American way. If this plays out, the subprime mortgage meltdown will be just the opening act on a nightmarish drama.
Alexander Hamilton, who built history’s most stable currency, a currency that funded an ideal and an empire, is spinning in his grave.
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures.”
And yes, I went right onto Facebook and started posting that around.
I wasn’t dancing in the streets Sunday night when I heard the news that bin Laden had been killed, but it felt undeniably good. Like many people, I knew someone killed that day, although only distantly. He was my brother’s best friend, a friend he’d had since high school, who was the original pilot of the second plane to hit the World Trade Center. When the terrorists took over the plane, they killed Victor, moved him out of the way, and plowed it into the tower, taking thousands more with them. Ten years later, it remains unlikely that my brother will find a new best friend he also went to high school with 45 years ago.
Over on Facebook, I find it infuriating how many people I know have expressed what sounds to my ears like sadness over the killing of Osama bin Laden. Yes, I am mischaracterizing it a bit, but here’s the post that a respected and somewhat-known playwright friend of mine put on her wall:
“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
I have several problems with this, not the least being that Martin Luther King Jr. never said this. If he had said it — which, as I’ve noted, he did not — it would be good to remember that despite his obvious many accomplishments, he was never the leader of a nation so brazenly attacked and explicitly conspired against. With regard to the sentiment in the quote, I think if I’d had the chance to take out Hitler, I would have done plenty of rejoicing. Osama is lower down on that scale, but still makes my list.
In the past couple of days whenever I’ve had a few spare minutes, I’ve trawled around on my Facebook feed, seeking out “Friends” who’ve posted the illegitimate quote from “Martin Luther King Jr.” and responded accordingly. Here’s one of the replies I received:
The Dalai Lama said that if we kill Osama Bin Laden we will create 10 more.
I don’t know if the Dalai Lama said this, and if he did, I don’t know why we should care. His opinion on the matter seems to me irrelevant. And I’m just curious what the perceived alternative was to taking out Osama, now that we’d finally actually found him (with no thanks to the government of Pakistan, which has been pilfering my tax money and yours). This was a person who orchestrated an attack that killed thousands of innocent people and devastated the U.S. economy, and who was eager to do more of the same. Historically, all the accommodation in the world has done little to appease the hunger of terrorists and invaders, from Genghis Khan to Hitler to Osama. I’ve begun to think that Osama bin Laden’s final attack has been on the common sense of some of our own people.
Over on Quora, there’s a fun discussion about worst-designed products ever. It’s well worth reading, and voting on. Representative nominees:
the infamous butterfly ballot that bequeathed the George W. Bush “presidency” to us (which itself was very badly designed)
the sort of plastic clamshell packaging that requires garden shears to open
the obviously un-ergonomic Apple puck mouse with the too-short cord
with special honorable mention going to this squirt gun, for obvious reasons
But bar none, the worst design has to go to the Reliant Robin, an English car that we are very very lucky never made its way to Los Angeles. Forget earthquakes, riots, gang wars, and the state budget deficit, the Reliant Robin would be the one disaster LA would have no chance to overcome.
This brief excerpt from the documentary “The Punk Years” reminds us why she was important, as a feminist pioneer for punks, and as someone predicting the forthcoming clash between consumerism and conservation.
And this shows her fronting her flat-out great band on a great song. I’m sad knowing she’s gone, but I’m glad we have this.
At age 13, Rebecca Black is a talented young girl trapped between enormous sudden fame and instant lasting ridicule. You wouldn’t think that someone who has received 120 million views of her video on YouTube, and who recently performed her song “Friday” on “The Tonight Show,” and who has done all this without the benefit of a major label or close industry connections, needs anyone to come to her defense, but I’m going to do it anyway.
First, here’s her video. If, somehow, you haven’t already seen this, you’re going to want to watch it as a point of reference. And if you ever can’t find it again, simply go to YouTube, consistently one of the five most visited websites on the planet, and start to enter Rebecca Black’s name into the search field. Here’s how far you’ll get before YouTube suggests the correct response: one letter. That’s right, you’ll get as far as “R” before it suggests “Rebecca Black Friday.” Before “Rihanna,” “rad,” or anything else you might think would come up first. Try the same thing with Google and you get the same result: one letter, and it’s “Rebecca Black.” Lady Gaga is just damn glad that her name doesn’t start with “r.”
Now please take a couple of minutes and pay witness to the source of her fame. Here goes.
Now that you have watched that, it’s done to you what it did to me last week: It has nested in your head, where it will stay for days on end, no matter how you try to get it out or subsume it with other, more widely respected music. Are the lyrics “good”? No. But they don’t compare badly with those of some other songs. To wit:
A Horse With No Name
On the first part of the journey,
I was looking at all the life.
There were plants and birds and rocks and things,
There was sand and hills and rings.
The first thing I met, was a fly with a buzz,
And the sky, with no clouds.
The heat was hot, and the ground was dry,
But the air was full of sound.
I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name,
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
I think that that compares rather unfavorably with Rebecca Black’s lyrics:
It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend
The 13-year-old Miss Black’s lyrics express an emotion that many of us can relate to (which I will characterize as “Hooray, it’s Friday!”), and she does so in a way we can understand. Meanwhile, the grown man who wrote America’s “A Horse With No Name” tells us that he “met a fly with a buzz” and that “the heat was hot.” I have to think that while he was in this desert, he was ingesting mescaline.
Here is another set of lyrics which you may also recognize, also written by a grown man, one who has had a rather noteworthy career:
When I’m ridin’ round the world
And I’m doin’ this and I’m signing that
And I’m tryin’ to make some girl
Who tells me baby better come back later next week
‘Cause you see I’m on a losing streak
I can’t get no, oh no, no, no
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say
Under scrutiny, I don’t think that the lyrics of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” are any better than those of Rebecca Black. It’s a short slope, after all, from “I can’t get no, oh no, no, no
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say” to “we so awesome.” Lyrics aren’t the point, as proved so unerringly by David Byrne, whose lyrics both with and without Talking Heads serve to connote a feeling (usually anxiety and alienation) rather than denote an argument. The point of a song is the song, and lyrics are just a part of that. Not convinced? Try reading pseudo-poet Jim Morrison’s scribblings in service of The Doors; divorced from the instrumentation, they are unbearable.
While my daughter, who is only a couple months separated in age from Rebecca Black, and is thus a generational peer, will have none of this, and throws her hands over her ears whenever I play this Rebecca Black song, I know the song is every bit as infectious as “The Macarena,” which I have not heard once in 15 years and which I’ve nevertheless been unable to plunge from my consciousness. “Friday” also does not seem to me far removed from Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine,” which was regarded then and now fondly, and which is no less puerile. So I have to think that what we’re looking at here is age discrimination. Part of me is just glad that, for once, it’s directed at the too-young rather than the too-old.
Will Rebecca Black last? I rather doubt it, but who knows? One measurement of success is parody. “Weird Al” may not have gone after her yet (although he’s already set his sites on the Gaga; watch for the video, coming soon), but this fellow has, and thereby further proves her credibility.
This is the new video from Devo. You would think that if there were one 80’s music act that was going to sound dated 20+ years later, it would be Devo. (And, okay, Howard Jones.) But this song, released last June, sounds remarkably fresh, and this video proves their continuing embrace of new things. This video is interactive: It’s shot in 360, meaning that you can scroll left or right or up or down with your mouse to direct how the video moves, and links at the bottom allow you to click and buy related items immediately. That’s all great — and so is the song. I had the great good fortune to see Devo last year on this tour, and they were terrific. For more information on the making the video, click here, but after you watch the video.
