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.