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Friday, June 10, 2005
How happy I was to have chanced upon the MTV Movie Awards, something I’d never before seen. In addition to watching rich children award other rich children for things like “best onscreen kiss” (I’d like to thank my top lip and my bottom lip, who really are the kind of facial features one dreams of working with… and none of it would have been possible without my costar’s tongue…”), there was one very moving moment.
This actress, Hilary something (Duff? Swank? Dude? Gent? Nugget?) sashays out with that “I’m about to introduce something truly important” air about her. “Every once in a great while, a true film EVENT occurs: a life-changing, era-defining masterpiece of such eventful great-whileness that lives are changed and eras defined!” (of course, I paraphrase) Whatever could she be leading to?
THE BREAKFAST CLUB.
Oh my aching perineum! Jesus aitch Cocksucker! Great flaming heaps of Mole Rat dung! THE BREAKFAST FUCKING CLUB!?!
“And here to help us relive those memories as we view a heart-tugging montage of scenes, a special performance of the immortal theme (Don’t You) Forget About Me by the unbelievably awesome YELLOWSTREAK!” The band had a name something like that, anyway; I am a middle-aged man, and do not feel obliged to “keep up” with the dire amusements of today’s cretinous kinderhordes. Anyway… There’s this band: the absolute usual, plus a fiddle. The dirgey version they extruded actually managed to make me nostalgic for Simple Minds! “Now THAT was bad music! In my day, bad music was bad! It was MUSIC! It was BAD MUSIC! These kids today don’t know nothin’ about Bad… nothin’ about Music! Why, this shit’s too nowhere to even dislike!”
Jim Kerr was one goofy looking dick whose attempts to pose as a pouting rocker came off like Kukla making Marilyn Monroe fuck-me faces. His band of nonentities played a brand of droning, sub-U2 linoleumlieder only slightly less stimulating than those white noise generators people use to help get some shut-eye. This big hit song, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” or “Don’t (You Forget) About (Me)” or any way you parenthetically subdivide it, slid across the ears with relatively little abrasion. Consider other tunes of the time:
Mister Mister: “Broken Wings,” a song built from a stolen line from McCartney’s “Blackbird.” Followup ideas: “Vera, Chuck (and Dave),” “Tres Bien Ensemble,” “(Please) Lock Me Away.”
Lyric: “when we hear / the voices sing / the book of love will open up for us / and let us in” Gee, Gumby!
Glen Frey: “The Heat Is On,” a milestone of rhythmically annoying, clueless bad-assery. Late of Rolling Stone magazine’s bimonthly 70s cover faves The Eagles, Frey was odious enough to force a grudging respect for his somewhat less detestable bandmate Don Henley, which is like yearning for a toothache to distract you from stomach cramps. Do any of you actually enjoy – or have you ever enjoyed – “Hotel California?” Then I have no choice but to point at you and titter.
Starship: “We Built This City.” My oh my… what is there to say about the time-honored inanity of this spectacular tub of chum? Here is a work so egregiously incoherent you are forced to despise its philosophical stance even though you couldn’t claim to understand one couplet on all the hallucinogens in Frisco. Here’s a chunk of product so heavy laden with mucous-gleaming gated-reverb overproduction it was outdated one hour after final mixdown. Here’s a musical cipher so redolent of syntars and mousse-caked mullets… a spandex-bulging embarrassment of such jaw-dropping shopping-mall-essence it achieves inarguable Dork Divinity. Listen to the breathy synth-flutes, like HAL with asthma! Listen to Grace Slick snarl about “corporation games” with a baldfaced in-biz smugness of Sarandonian immensity! Behold little Mickey Whatshisname posturing like an angry pixie through the video, eyes revealing such depths of stagnant stupidity that to gaze into them is to osmose into a hell-dimension of teal blue carpenter pants and terrycloth kamikaze headbands.
OK – that’s too easy and obvious a target for abuse, and I’m way off on a tangent. But let us recall that the song sold millions of copies. That was America, and those same idiots also bought millions of tix to The Breakfast Club. And now, 20 years on, if both of these exemplars of cultural chaff seem like artistic peaks in contrast to their intolerable contemporary equivalents, we can only wipe a tear and forge onward.
So… this a-hole band grinds out their cover version as the simpleminded audience is shown clips of The Breakfast Club, edited in such a way as to ostensibly play like the “Gonna Fly Now” sequence of “Rocky.” Somehow I couldn’t have mustered up one little chill with a dry ice suppository. After the clip, Hilary calls to the stage Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and the nerdy guy with three names. Ascending the steps to a mass roar of ecstasy, They seem overcome with rapturous pride. Molly Ringwald hogs the mic, babbling on and on about how they knew they were working on something important, but had no idea just HOW important it would turn out to be in the full context of history. The guy who played the mean teacher (or whatever he was) hands the trio a trophy shaped like an enormous order of popcorn. The thing is bigger than Ms Sheedy. Tears, cheers.
What can I say?
This actress, Hilary something (Duff? Swank? Dude? Gent? Nugget?) sashays out with that “I’m about to introduce something truly important” air about her. “Every once in a great while, a true film EVENT occurs: a life-changing, era-defining masterpiece of such eventful great-whileness that lives are changed and eras defined!” (of course, I paraphrase) Whatever could she be leading to?
THE BREAKFAST CLUB.
Oh my aching perineum! Jesus aitch Cocksucker! Great flaming heaps of Mole Rat dung! THE BREAKFAST FUCKING CLUB!?!
“And here to help us relive those memories as we view a heart-tugging montage of scenes, a special performance of the immortal theme (Don’t You) Forget About Me by the unbelievably awesome YELLOWSTREAK!” The band had a name something like that, anyway; I am a middle-aged man, and do not feel obliged to “keep up” with the dire amusements of today’s cretinous kinderhordes. Anyway… There’s this band: the absolute usual, plus a fiddle. The dirgey version they extruded actually managed to make me nostalgic for Simple Minds! “Now THAT was bad music! In my day, bad music was bad! It was MUSIC! It was BAD MUSIC! These kids today don’t know nothin’ about Bad… nothin’ about Music! Why, this shit’s too nowhere to even dislike!”
Jim Kerr was one goofy looking dick whose attempts to pose as a pouting rocker came off like Kukla making Marilyn Monroe fuck-me faces. His band of nonentities played a brand of droning, sub-U2 linoleumlieder only slightly less stimulating than those white noise generators people use to help get some shut-eye. This big hit song, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” or “Don’t (You Forget) About (Me)” or any way you parenthetically subdivide it, slid across the ears with relatively little abrasion. Consider other tunes of the time:
Mister Mister: “Broken Wings,” a song built from a stolen line from McCartney’s “Blackbird.” Followup ideas: “Vera, Chuck (and Dave),” “Tres Bien Ensemble,” “(Please) Lock Me Away.”
Lyric: “when we hear / the voices sing / the book of love will open up for us / and let us in” Gee, Gumby!
Glen Frey: “The Heat Is On,” a milestone of rhythmically annoying, clueless bad-assery. Late of Rolling Stone magazine’s bimonthly 70s cover faves The Eagles, Frey was odious enough to force a grudging respect for his somewhat less detestable bandmate Don Henley, which is like yearning for a toothache to distract you from stomach cramps. Do any of you actually enjoy – or have you ever enjoyed – “Hotel California?” Then I have no choice but to point at you and titter.
Starship: “We Built This City.” My oh my… what is there to say about the time-honored inanity of this spectacular tub of chum? Here is a work so egregiously incoherent you are forced to despise its philosophical stance even though you couldn’t claim to understand one couplet on all the hallucinogens in Frisco. Here’s a chunk of product so heavy laden with mucous-gleaming gated-reverb overproduction it was outdated one hour after final mixdown. Here’s a musical cipher so redolent of syntars and mousse-caked mullets… a spandex-bulging embarrassment of such jaw-dropping shopping-mall-essence it achieves inarguable Dork Divinity. Listen to the breathy synth-flutes, like HAL with asthma! Listen to Grace Slick snarl about “corporation games” with a baldfaced in-biz smugness of Sarandonian immensity! Behold little Mickey Whatshisname posturing like an angry pixie through the video, eyes revealing such depths of stagnant stupidity that to gaze into them is to osmose into a hell-dimension of teal blue carpenter pants and terrycloth kamikaze headbands.
OK – that’s too easy and obvious a target for abuse, and I’m way off on a tangent. But let us recall that the song sold millions of copies. That was America, and those same idiots also bought millions of tix to The Breakfast Club. And now, 20 years on, if both of these exemplars of cultural chaff seem like artistic peaks in contrast to their intolerable contemporary equivalents, we can only wipe a tear and forge onward.
So… this a-hole band grinds out their cover version as the simpleminded audience is shown clips of The Breakfast Club, edited in such a way as to ostensibly play like the “Gonna Fly Now” sequence of “Rocky.” Somehow I couldn’t have mustered up one little chill with a dry ice suppository. After the clip, Hilary calls to the stage Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and the nerdy guy with three names. Ascending the steps to a mass roar of ecstasy, They seem overcome with rapturous pride. Molly Ringwald hogs the mic, babbling on and on about how they knew they were working on something important, but had no idea just HOW important it would turn out to be in the full context of history. The guy who played the mean teacher (or whatever he was) hands the trio a trophy shaped like an enormous order of popcorn. The thing is bigger than Ms Sheedy. Tears, cheers.
What can I say?
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