A LAZY POST!
POINT 1: The Giants stink, and might not make the playoffs.
OH YEAH, THE YANKEES WON THE SERIES!
POINT 2: Duke basketball is going to suck this year, I think. More on this later.
OH YEAH, THE YANKEES WON THE SERIES!
POINT 3: The Knicks are awful, and I'm too afraid to buy a Dino Gallinari jersey because I think he might be traded next year.
OH YEAH, THE YANKEES WON THE SERIES!
POINT 4: It's looking less and less likely that I can ever be unemployed and still have health insurance for free.
OH YEAH, THE YANKEES WON THE SERIES!
BUT STILL, THAT SHIT BLOWWSSSSS!
Okay, I have some commentary to make. This is about that Jay Z/Alicia Keys song "Empire State of Mind." You've all heard it; it's the one with the really catchy "New York" chorus. And man, Alicia really belts it out. It was Jeter's at-bat music at the end of the season, and it's sort of taken the city (and maybe the country? I'm not too up on what's happening out there) by storm.
But man, those lyrics? They're really, really stupid. Here's the chorus:
In New York,
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of,
There's nothing you can't do.
Now you're in New York,
These streets will make you feel brand new,
The lights will inspire you!
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of,
There's nothing you can't do.
Now you're in New York,
These streets will make you feel brand new,
The lights will inspire you!
The whole thing is pretty banal, which I guess is pretty par for the course in pop music today, but man...would it kill them to have at least one interesting line? I'm not sure who writes Jay Z's lyrics, but was it possible for them to spend any less time composing the chorus? The whole thing had to be finished in less than twenty seconds, right? There's no way a human being spent more a half minute penning those lines.
But the really loathsome part is the second line: "Concrete jungle where dreams are made of."
Because it's grammatically incorrect in such a childish way. "Where dreams are made of"? Seriously? Is it possible that during the (presumably) long production process, nobody caught this? Were people too scared of Jay Z to say anything? And it's not a hard fix- change the word 'where' to 'that,' and voila. You've got a sensical clause.
Even Sinatra's New York song, which is not the height of poetry, has some decent lines, like "these vagabond shoes are longing to stray." At least it gives you an image to hang your hat on. Also, that is an example of 'synecdoche,' a term I would not know without Charlie Kauffman.
"Concrete jungle where dreams are made of." That is the product of a group of people not giving a fuck about the lyrics, but to an extreme degree. To let that one slip by, you have to be assiduous about not giving a fuck. You can't care even a little; you can't even be defiant about not caring. You have to actually write the words in twenty seconds, and then never think about them again.
That single line is maybe the apotheosis of American pop culture. This is what old people and pundits are secretly afraid of when they rant about weird distractions like socialism or Obama's birth certificate.
I sort of read the rest of the lyrics, and it appears to be largely about money, girls, status, drugs, and how the place you're from is the best one going, complete with the five or so lines that are just reciting specific place names. So no new ground there. Except one line pissed me off again:
"I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can."
NOT TRUE, JAY Z, THIS IS A TEAM WITH A LOT OF HISTORY AND 27 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIPS AND ALSO THE HAT SYMBOLIZES NEW YORK CITY AND YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT YOU BASTARD!
(I just read the third verse lyrics, and they're actually okay.)
Hey, I just saw a good movie yesterday. It's old, though: "The Great Dictator," by Charlie Chaplin. Set in a fictional country called Tomainia (a very loose stand-in for Germany), it's Chaplin's first talkie. For the sake of description, let's call it a furious comic manifesto on Hitler's epic creepiness. Chaplin plays the dictator, Hynkel, as well as a Jewish peasant who served in the first World War and lives in a Tomainian ghetto.
If you're like me, you're kinda dkeptical about old 'classic' films, which a lot of times end up being awesome but can also be seriously boring (time to invite some wrath: "Citizen Kane" is a fucking snooze). This one really delivers, though; Chaplin is a pretty timeless comic performer, so there are decent laughs throughout, but the lingering impression is one of utter rage. The film was released in 1940, before America's involvement in WW2 had even begun, but long after people in the know realized what was happening in Europe. His depiction of Hynkel is so good it's almost disturbing; it captures Hitler's manic intensity along with Chaplin's hatred in a perfect character composite. Somehow, it made me hate the Nazis more than a typical war movie, or even a documentary. It gets right to the heart of what's evil about the German war machine, skewers it with parody, and riles the viewer into a state of agitation. And it's a Charlie Chaplin film!
So check that out, if it's your thing. If not, my brothers and sisters, I don't care. Why?
THE YANKEES WON THE SERIES!
Oh Yeah Tuesdays. Can't beat 'em, not in this world.
I think that Alicia Keys (or one of her handlers) was probably responsible for the chorus. Just saying - Jay-Z's not really into the warm and fuzzies... lyrically speaking.
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