On Lady Gaga (for about 11% of the post ... then other things)

Back when I was "straight"—what a big joke that was—or pretending to be straight, or identifying as bi-sexual ... whatever ... I was vehemently disgusted by pop music. Britney Spears made me want to upchuck razor blades—blades I'd swallowed because I'd been forced to listen to Spears, or, perhaps, happened upon her music, or, alternately, thought about her music—as did every glossy, tramped-up, whore-mouthed, goofy-ass "band" that pumped through the radio, for about one week, before fading into obscurity.

"Fag-o-Tronic Electronic"

When I became "gay"—what a big joke that is—I ceased this silly hateful closeted and borderline homophobic behavior and embraced my inner pop-music-loving queer. Fag-o-Tronic Electronic!

Still, this newfound appreciation for synthetic, disposable, meaningless, shallow and culturally insignificant pop did not, at first, extend into Lady Gaga territory. I was naturally hesitant to listen to Gaga due to

• Her popularity (I'm wary of stuff everybody likes) and
• Her nose

Then I gave it a shot and fell in love with four songs—and four songs only:

1. "Teeth"
2. "Poker Face"
3. "Telephone"
4. "Bad Romance"

This, kids, is the most
accurate representation of
Bipolar I could find

The other songs I've heard are bland—cyclical, barely disguised rehashes of tunes that've been mass-produced since the '80s. The other tracks sound like her pop predecessors, like Spears (who have now been whittled into financial failures, bipolar messes, junkies, or have finally succumbed to the realization that talent never existed for them in the first place) and because of this, I have little faith in Lady Gaga's sustainability as either a musical performer or a pop-culture icon.

If her next album doesn't blow hair back—doesn't innovate on her already quasi-original approach to performing (which I'd say is 66% stolen from Marilyn Manson [or 666%, har har har]) and writing (which is supposedly all done by her, but c'mon, it's the producers for fuck's sake; Amy Winehouse "wrote" her songs but it was clearly Mark Ronson doing the heavy lifting)—well, see ya, Whoreface 2012.

All this aside ... go Gaga!

"Show me yer meat meat meat meat"

The main reason I like Lady Gaga is precisely because she's essentially the female equivalent of Marilyn Manson—without all the underage sex and self-cutter grandstanding. Both artists—if you wanna call either of 'em that—have transformed their physical appearances into works of art. Their respective outfits (I'm lookin' at you, Meat Costume) are playful, and, in some cases (again: Meat Costume), borderline thoughtful. Who knew?

But again, I digress.

There are songs and albums that enter our lives at particularly crucial moments, be it an anniversary; a birth; a break-up; a cataclysmic vehicle accident; an escaped zoo tiger's gory mauling of an entire home for the elderly; or the time you found yourself chained to the radiator of your neighbor's basement, sustaining on rat innards, pried from bone by hand, throat hoarse and infected from screaming and asbestos, respectively, praying for rescue, praying for salvation, beginning, reluctantly, desperately, to believe in the gospel of Christ—stories you'd hitherto convinced yourself were lies from Daddy's whore mouth, told expressly and with great manipulative powers, the ones only parental figures possess, to get you eating carrots, gagging, sickly, eyes filled with tears of agony and defeat, but complacent, rubbery in conviction—armed only with your wits, a pair of shit-soiled khakis, and a Sony Discman.

It's then that you attribute that particular life experience to whatever CD spun over and over again, almost but not quite drowning out the screams of the other trapped boys in Mr. Henderson's musty, dirt-floored basement.

Memories....

... but now that I think about it—really think about it—there's actually nothing special about Lady Gaga, at least not in relation to my personal history and its sloppy weenus unfurling.

Sure, "Bad Romance" strikes a piano key or two ... but what song about love-gone-sour doesn't have the exact same effect? Looking at the lyrics you'll discover there's nothing truly special; nothing that warrants an OMG moment; not unless, of course, the basement scenario described above does have something to do with that song, in which case, yeah, powerful stuff, man.

The line I was thinking of when I started this post—"I don't wanna be fwends," warbled out in a particularly emotion-wrought way; without the "ri" bit—I mean, shit, c'mon, who does wanna be fwends with their exes? It rarely if ever works! So just 'cause I decided to pump "Bad Romance"—of all fucking songs—immediately after I got dumped on the needle-peppered streets of Central Square, Cambridge, doesn't mean that that line is anything unique or worthy of more than a couple of sentences—certainly not an entire blog.

So why, then, am I writing this fucking post to begin with? To take up space? To waste your time? How selfish can I possibly be? How in love with my own prose—prone to be purple; a propensity towards the pompous—am I? Is my death fated to be by the weight of my ego crushing the stinky red bits from my flesh like so many tubes of Colgate?

I guess I owe you an apology. Or not. Fuck it. You're the one who read it; not me. I just wrote it. Big diff.

Big Hearts!
J.B.

Wowza

The New York Times is one of the last still-standing newspapers available. Now that our culture has embraced websites, RSS feeds, iPad apps, or, worse yet, paywalls (that are easily leapt), it appears as though the New York Times may be the last soldier standing in a battlefield peppered with bankrupt corpses.

The paper also has a great rep for being the source for news. The paper's reporters are keen, sharp and, if you're lucky, they're witty. They're also well-known for getting the best sources, the dudefaces who're closest to the news, finger on the pulse, all that blood-centric analogous language.

Well, they were.

May I draw your attention to the article "Bubbles of Energy Are Found in Galaxy."

First of all, fuck that headline. Christ that's awful. Bubbles? Of energy? What the hell are those?

"Hi, I'm energy!"

So I read on to find out ... and apparently no one knows. Sure, space n' shit—that's some spicy mysterious gumbo—but that's why we have, y'know, scientists. With their white lab coats and tortured, make-up wearing monkeys and lonesome spouses and horn-rimmed glasses—they're the men and women of exploration and, eventually, explanation.

But these bubbles of energy failed to elicit any kind of helpful response at all. Instead, the article has the funniest fucking pullquotes I've ever seen.

When the bubbles were discovered, Doug Finkbeiner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics offered a description:

"They're big."

...

That's it.

Then Dennis Overbye, the author of the article, uses a pop-culture reference:

The source of the bubbles is a mystery. One possibility is that they are fueled by a wave of star births and deaths at the center of the galaxy. Another option is a gigantic belch from the black hole known to reside, like Jabba the Hutt, at the center of the Milky Way.

Yeah yeah, of course nerds are gonna read the science section of the times, and therefore are going to appreciate the Jabba shout-out, but really? I mean, that's journalism?

Gets better. Here's the Number One Best Quote of All Time:

"Wow."

David Spergel

This, coming from David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton, who, the article notes, was not involved in the work. So this is just some fucking guy who wandered into a room, probably twirling a pencil between his fingers, snapping on some gum, thinking about how to bust past his office's firewall to download porn, and was asked by Overbye, who is probably a friend, maybe even a circle-jerk buddy, to comment on a story he is in no way familiar with or related to, and he said, quite simply:

"Wow."

Yeah, wow is right. Wow to you, New York Times. Once again, you've raised the standard for journalism, set the bar at its height: so high it's melting in the sun (which, by the way, Overbye, is part of the universe, in case you're curious—maybe you could write that up in Part II of your Epic Quest to Understand Space).

On Excess (And Whatever)

Steven Tyler once said:

"If anything's worth doing, it's worth doing to excess."

Well played, sir.

Now—separating myself from Tyler's drug-fueled rants (and his post-detox suckage)—yet still acknowledging my own tendencies towards self-destructive impulses; uncontrolled; or at least barely leashed, despite years of therapy and similarly-quote-unquote-helpful drugs—I'd claim that excess, even when paired with delightful natural or unnatural or prescribed or unprescribed chemicals, can be interpreted in many forms.

For instance, this instance.

I'm sitting in a bar near Symphony Hall, Boston. Either a theater crowd—booted from other establishments due to awful, grave-rank perfume, monocle-shifting drunkenness, or the biggest killer: tourist's confusion—come here ... or else this is a secret dive, tucked in the heart of a shithole section of Boston Proper that's pretending to be okay. At least its bodyguards—Northeastern and the aforementioned music thingy that stuff happens in—claim that, attempt that.

Otherwise, this neighborhood sucks.

So here is Symphony 8. Some dumpy yet expansive joint, replete with black lacquered furnishings (but not a single black person) and, for some reason, Bob Marley (I thought the Irish hated blacks? ... guess it makes sense now).

It belongs, in that it's representative of the area's feeling, but not of its pretension. So why is this place even here?

Don't ask the blonde beer-tosser. She hasn't a clue. Her hunger for tips is evident in her eyes, her professionalism—icy and beautiful—unmatched by the others; her stride, as she zips, attached to rails, from the waitresses' drop-off point, to us bar people—miserable white MacBook satchels that we are—without a semblance of the niceness and, even—and even better—the falsity we expect from an establishment oh so close to the South End (a gutter).

A professional. Human—needy, achy, discontent, hungry, submissive, angry, fucking righteous—to excess.

But fuck it. As much as this shithole sucks gunsmoke from a loser's pistol, they've got Goose Island on tap, and I was under the impression that that shit was only available in Chicago.

Welcome to Chicago! We've found a replacement for those actually city-like streets (novelty!) that are unfortunately plagued with midwesterners, saggy with fanny-packs.

I'd be more comfortable here—more apt to enjoy my Goose Island, perhaps crack open the latest Lehane, or, if I dared, Lethem (good shit is complicated)—but the music has now turned ugly: early 90s rock; our generation's feeble attempt at prog, splashed with the twangy idiocy of the short-lived thoughtdream of ska, and overproduced to the point that those musical bents, even if performed well, couldn't even chip out a hole in the ice to breathe. It's hard to think, read—do anything other than drink—when the very establishment's owners are bribing you, and your mind, into silence.

But I digress.

The point: I'd be comfortable here if not for the dining room!

I didn't notice it at first (too caught up in admiration for one's words, perhaps?) but when I pissed (in the very clean and nice-smelling bathroom) there it was: a ballroom of tables—a Bronte panty-moistener—mostly populated, reams of chatter—but no windows.

I could never eat sans windows. I don't want people to watch me—and I definitely don't want to watch others (voyeurism, for me, died with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom)—but food shouldn't be private, locked away, hidden from view—the new homosexual!—because that'll just feed (haha) into the disease of overeating. You're eating too much, too fast, so go away.

I suppose—coincidentally, and gleefully—I've made it full circle: excess. I don't advocate it. Really. Who would want to shit blood? Who would want to turn yellow? Who wants to choke on their own vomit?

But the impulse can be separated from its consequences. You sit down. Color. Color outside the lines. See it in the sunshine.

Perhaps the initial blood-quaking urge to arrive at Symphony 8 was, in fact, to push body limitations to the point of screaming gears, the meltdown of the plant, the worker's revolt, but the end result—like everything we do, every goddamned step and breath and sigh and tear and sly manipulative grin—was an education.

Hey.

I went someplace new.

The guy next to me is reading a pulp paperback, maybe Stephen Hunter (of the Hunter series, obviously), maybe some grocery store hack I've never seen before...

Doesn't matter, 'cause here we are, all of us—and yes, they're separate from me because I look psychotic typing this much on a fucking iPhone—and this is our time—each of us!—to see how the other half plays on the playground.

Me, I piss in the sandbox.