Categories
Shallow

Things About Which I Am Newly Excited

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Ford Mustang convertible
Diet Pepsi (and P. Diddy and Carson Daly and Wilmer Valderrama)
Bubblicious
Olympus M:Rope
Ameriquest Mortgage
FedEx Kinko’s (and Burt Reynolds)
Bud Light (and Cedric the Entertainer )
Volvo (and Virgin Galactic and Richard Branson)
Diet Pepsi (and Cindy Crawford and Carson Kressley)
Godaddy.com (and enormous breasts)
The Longest Yard
Bud Light
The Longest Yard
McDonald’s (and Abraham Lincoln)
The Simpsons
Visa Check Card (and Marvel Comics)
Ameriquest Mortgage
Quizno’s (and Baby Bob)
Ameriquest Mortgage
MBNA (and Gladys Knight and John Travolta)
24 (and nuclear disaster)
American Idol

Categories
Shallow

Things About Which I Am Not Excited

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Categories
Shallow

A Note of Self-Congratulatory Navel Gazing

Yes, it finally happened on Saturday, and it was low culture to first break the news of Julian Casablancas’ engagement to Juliet, on April 21st of last year. Best wishes, kids.
low culture, your online gossip resource.

Categories
Shallow

The low culture Consumer Advisory

marlboro-1.jpgPerhaps you’ve seen the ads for Marlboro Seventy-Twos in Seventeen magazine, while watching MTV, or at your local youth center. And perhaps, like low culture, you’ve been tempted to find out more about Philip Morris’ newest teen sensation and buy a pack. Don’t.
A quick phone call to the suicide hotline at Philip Morris revealed that the “Seventy Twos” are merely shorter cigarettes. That’s right – no value-added tar, chemicals, toxins or tobacco – it’s just less cigarette at the same obscene price. If the tobacco companies can’t be trusted to offer their consumers the best value, can they be trusted at all? Probably.

Categories
Shallow

Keeping It Real

bunnygamer.jpgIf Fahrenheit 9/11’s and Super Size Me’s box office numbers didn’t prove evidence enough, the recent Sundance Festival should convince you – documentaries are a hot commodity. And amid the non-fiction hullabaloo arrives The Documentary, the sizzling hot hip-hop debut from Dre’s latest discovery, The Game.
Unfortunately, The Game’s depiction of thug life stands up to scrutinous fact-checking no more than your average Stephen Glass color piece or Michael Moore agitprop. Aftermath Records? There is a Fabulist among you. Consider the facts:
Fabrication: On his rap song “Dreams,” The Game asserts “They say sleep is the cousin of death…”
Fact: Virgil considers death the “brother to sleep,” (“consanguineus Leti Sopor”) (VI.18). Cf. Heine’s Death, and his Brother Sleep. Brother and cousin represents a material discrepancy.
Fabrication: On the track “Hate It or Love It,” The Game declaims “Kill a nigga on my song but really do it/ That’s the true meaning of a ‘ghostwriter.'”
Fact: According to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, ghostwriter means “one who writes for and in the name of another” (transitive sense). No proffered definition, contemporary or obsolete, describes “killing niggas.”
Fabrication: On his hot joint “Higher,” The Game boasts “Like Dre did/ I created a buzz without a single…”
Fact: Per hip-hop resource Rolling Stone, “The Documentary” relies upon the “killer single, ‘How We Do,’ an A-list Dre tune that’s piled with hooks.” Rolling Stone is beyond reproach. Obviously.
Fabrication: On “Don’t Need Your Love,” The Game goes so far as to brag, “got all the critics watchin [sic] my pivot/ On my block in the Coupe reading [sic] kites from prison…”
Fact: To document this statement’s countless failings in source materials and matters of fact would require more space than is available. However, let it be said that New York Times critic A.O. Scott, among others, has never acknowledged watching The Game’s pivot, publicly at least. Additionally, kites, whether box, sled, delta, or winged box, are rarely, if ever, allowed in prisons.
Fabrication: According to The Game’s flow on No More Fun & Games, “Not to down Eminem I fuck black bitches, fuck white bitches, nigga I like bitches/ Them half and half Alicia Keys dyke bitches.”
Fact: There is no evidence that Alicia Keys sapphic inclinations represent only half her gender identity. The preponderance of oral history suggests Ms. Keys is entirely a “dyke bitch.”
Fabrication: On his track “Special,” The Game promises, “I’ll take you to New York City, Atlanta too/ Show you how to fly them birds…”
Fact: Thus far, The Game has not taken me to New York or Atlanta, nor has he shown me how to fly any birds. I am, however, available for promised activities – The Game can contact me here. I also like bitches.

Categories
Shallow

Damn Those Production Deadlines

From the February/March issue of Complex magazine:

Maldives in Monsoon Season
Some of the best surfing in the world takes place on this small island off the coast of India as winter comes to its stormy end.
“The Complex Dozen: Things that matter in February and March”


Related: Tsunami, a Long-Term View

Categories
Shallow

Overheard During Intermission of Last Night’s “Hurlyburly”

If I wanted to watch a bunch of people sitting around doing coke and talking I could have stayed at the apartment.
(With apologies to Overheard in New York, and David Rabe’s Hurlyburly)

Categories
Shallow

Does Anyone Else Find It Strange That Henry Darger Was Hired To Sketch the Jackson Trial?

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The Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, identify their Assailant.
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At Neverland Ranch, only to escape again.
More on Henry Darger, and more creepy courtroom sketches of Michael Jackson.

Categories
Satirical Shallow

Vanity Fair Wants to Know What You Think!

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Take the V.F. poll, at the all new VanityFair.com.
Related: Graydon Rides the Wave, by Jennifer Senior, New York, 12/11/00

Categories
Shallow

The Louise Post Post

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Veruca Salt’s Louise Post goes Anna Nicole Smith.
From Willy Wonka’s I Want It Now, sung by Veruca Salt (the character, not the band):

I want a feast
I want a bean feast
Cream buns and donuts and fruitcake with no nuts
So good you could go nuts
I want a ball
I want a party
Pink macaroons and a million balloons
And performing baboons
Give it to me
NOW!

Indeed.
(Thanks Erin)