Unremarkable Aspiring Singer-Songwriter Guy

Have you ever seen those print ads for attorneys where the attorney is holding a phone to his ear like he’s in the middle of cracking a case and was completely caught off guard by the photographer, lighting crew, and make-up team?  Well it looks like that type of visual dishonesty is no longer confined to the arena of law.  Whereas the attorney wants to project an image of tenacity and hard work, this aspiring singer-songwriter wants to project an image of earthy romanticism.  By not acknowledging the camera, he wants us to believe we’ve just caught him casually strumming his guitar at the edge of a wooded meadow.  The reality, though, is much less romantic.  Only after promising to pay gas money was he was able to convince a friend to haul him and his guitar to the nearest forest.  After several hours of trying to find an angle that wouldn’t cause his gigantic nose to entirely eclipse the other half of his face, they settled on this uncomfortable pose.  Several hundred megabytes of wasted disk space later they finally managed to accidentally snap a picture that almost neutralized the incredible size-difference between his eyes.  Their hard work went for naught, however, since they seem to have skimped on two very important departments:  wardrobe, and whoever is in charge of making sure you don’t have Hobbit hair.

At the very heart of the aspiring singer-songwriter’s psychic apparatus lies an undeniable paradox.  For people who clearly crave attention and desperately want to stand out, it seems like they almost go out of their way to be as bland and uninteresting as possible.  Just one visit to a coffee shop’s open mic night is enough to get an idea of the unbelievable lack of imagination involved in their songwriting.  Faced with an infinitely vast pool of songwriting possibilities, they prefer to stay in the shallow end, churning out songs about a pretty girl they used to like, a beautiful sunset they saw, or how rain makes them feel sad.  Rain makes everyone feel sad, you stupid idiots.  Try being more insightful than a third-grader.

This self-imposed creative dampening isn’t confined to just their music; it seeps into their personalities, as well.  Talk to any aspiring singer-songwriter and you’ll quickly get the impression that any sharp points in their personality have long ago been sanded down to dull nubs in an attempt to offend as few people as possible.  They usually hold such bland beliefs as, “Everybody should just get along,” and, “Love can solve all of our problems,” and, “You should check out my MySpace.”  Is it that hard for them to realize there might be a correlation between their mild beliefs and their soft, neutered songs?  Just once I want to meet an aspiring singer-songwriter who worships the devil.  Then I’ll check out your MySpace.  Until then, there are some waves softly rolling up onto the beach that are begging to be sung about.

Overall rating:  0/10

Probably named:  Forrest Dump

Mom, Will This Chicken Give Me Man Boobs? – Robyn Harding

Despite Susan Juby’s bubble-captioned exclamation, this is not a fabulous book.  Whoever Susan Juby is, she’s probably not someone whose contextless quotes are influential enough to slap across your book’s cover.  I don’t know anyone whose book-purchasing decisions are influenced by blurbs from other authors, so the whole enterprise’s effectiveness is probably questionable, but even so, the front cover is usually reserved for the heavy hitters.  You got a blurb from Dan Brown?  Put it on the cover.  Ernest Hemingway’s regenerated corpse read your book and thought it was blrrghhhshfff?  Put it on the cover.  Susan Juby considers your book to be fabulous?  Nobody cares.  Put it on the back.

This book offers a timeless lesson in the importance of subtitles.  There’s no denying that provocative subtitles can persuade a browser to open up a book and check out the first page, but when your title includes the terms ‘chicken’ and ‘man boobs,’ you’ve already done enough provoking.  At that point, a subtitle runs the risk of giving away too much information and losing a potential reader, which is exactly what happens here.  The title does its job perfectly.  It grabs your attention and makes you ask what the book is about.  Unfortunately, the subtitle quickly lets go of your attention by answering:  My Confused, Guilt-Ridden, and Stressful Struggle to Raise A Green Family.  So close.  Either hide the boring subtitle on the inside cover, or tweak it.  If the subtitle was changed to My Confused, Guilt-Ridden, and Stressful Struggle to Raise A Retarded Idiot Child, the cover would not only make more sense, but become an instant classic.

Harding’s book isn’t about her struggle to correct her retarded, inquisitive son’s muddled understanding of cause-and-effect, though.  It’s about her ‘stressful struggle to raise a green family.’  That she’s probably unaware of how heavily this phrase oozes with sanctimonious condescension is no excuse.  A single mother working two minimum-wage jobs to give her children a chance at a better life is involved in a struggle.  An upper-middle-class woman trying to ease her white guilt by going on a self-righteous crusade to save the planet is not.  Feel free to research bovine growth hormones on your MacBook Pro all day long, but don’t write a book telling me how stressful that is.  If it’s really that stressful to raise a green family, don’t.  The fate of the planet doesn’t rest in your hands.

The reason Robyn Harding and thousands like her ‘struggle’ to live a green life has nothing to do with saving the planet.  Despite the altruistic cover, the underlying motivations are no less selfish than those that drive people to buy the newest gadgets or read difficult literature or listen to bands that nobody has heard of; they want to believe they’re better than other people.  Smarter, more important, more righteous, et cetera.  If you want to feel better than other people, go ahead, but at least have the self-awareness to understand your own internal motivations.  Nobody wants to pay twenty dollars to listen to you talk about how great your shit smells.  Everybody’s shit smells bad.

And no, Billy, you moron, chickens don’t give you man boobs.  Cows do.

Overall rating:  0/10

Rearrangements of the title with possible contexts:

Mom will give me this chicken, Boobs Man.  (Said to a non-traditional super-hero)

This mom will give me boobs, Chicken Man.  (Said to a non-traditional super-hero)

Will!  Me boobs, man!  Give mom this chicken.  (Said with a British accent to a sibling named Will after receiving a purple-nurple while trying to give him a chicken to give to his mother)

The Apples In Stereo – Travellers In Space And Time

I have to admit I was surprised to learn that The Apples In Stereo are still around. What’s even more surprising, though, is that the incredible stretching of the definition of the word ‘music’ that’s required to encompass the noises they produce hasn’t caused it’s connotation to snap like a semantic rubber band and forever remove all meaning from the term.  Yet.

You may be familiar with The Apples In Stereo as a founding member of the Elephant Six Collective, an early 90’s indie-musical commune whose name was derived from the six good songs they managed to accidentally produce and the animal who most exemplified the subtlety with which they played their instruments.  The comparisons end, there, however.   Whereas an elephant is said to never forget, an Elephant Sixer not only can forget, but, in order to overlook it’s increasing irrelevancy, diminishing fan base, and declining creativity, it must.  Only a failing memory can account for such an unpleasant band’s decision to release a new album.  Did they even listen to their last one?  If they didn’t, they’re not alone.

Travellers In Space And Time, due out sooner than never, which is a shame, isn’t going to break any new ground for the band.  The cover, riddled with optical illusions, is struggling create the impression that, just as their design questions the way you see things, so too will their music question the way you hear things.  That impression is only half-true, however.  Their music won’t leave you questioning the way you hear things, but the why.  Give credit where credit is due, though.  In linking the visual experience of optical illusions to their music, The Apples In Stereo are making the provocative statement that they are a musical illusion.  No argument here.

Overall rating:  1/10

Immature reinterpretation of the band’s name:  The Crapples In Stere-blow

Not-Aware-He’s-Flipping-Himself-Off-Guy

I understand that not everyone has a picture laying around that they can use as a profile picture, and so occasionally the need arises to make one.  You could always ask someone to take a picture of you for Facebook, but if you’re a normal person who feels uneasy about sounding so self-important, you’ll probably opt for the privacy of taking one yourself.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  What’s bothersome is when a person takes a picture of himself taking a picture of himself, brazenly calling attention to the act itself.  If these photographs were hung on the walls of a contemporary art exhibit, the message could be interpreted as meta-commentary on the obliteration of the observer/observed dichotomy, but instead they hang on the digital walls of Facebook, and the message can only be interpreted one way:  I am an uninteresting moron.

The fact that this guy would go to all the trouble of perfectly matching the blues of his hat, bandana, and girl’s shirt only to throw off the harmonization with the un-matching dark blue of his camera tells you that he’s not one-hundred-percent committed to being an enormous tool.  Which is a shame, because with a few minor tweaks (sunglasses, Chuck Taylors, and a stated desire to become a DJ), this guy could easily climb the ranks of tooldom.  As it stands now, he’s just a waste of the opposite of potential.

With the middle finger pose he’s clearly going for an image of cool, detached rebellion, but it’s hard to look cool with a flat nose, fat lips, and a chin that looks like it was wiped with adhesive before meeting the business side of a goat’s ball sack.  He seems to be unaware that by standing in front of a mirror holding up his middle finger he is, in effect, telling himself, “Fuck you.”  At least we can agree on something.

Overall rating:  1/10

Probably named:  Taint Jackson

MGMT – Congratulations

It would be hard to argue that MGMT’s debut album, Oracular Spectacular, was anything short of solid.  Songs like Time To Pretend, The Youth, Kids, Electric Feel, and Pieces of What were not only catchy and fun, but pretty great, too.  In today’s musical climate, putting out an album where half of the songs are great is no small feat.  But MGMT always seemed to me like a band that wasn’t prepared to be as popular as they ended up being.  They viewed their blend of funky, danceable, electric pop as underground, just far enough out of the mainstream to stay cool.  Of course they smiled when their album took off and their songs were put in commercials and movie trailers, but behind their smiles you could tell they were hiding that special type of seething resentment reserved for the commercial masses when they gobble up a piece of work that the artist saw as uncommercial and edgy (Jonathan Franzen’s reaction to being named to Oprah’s Book Club is a wildly pertinent example).  When people who think they’re smart create something they think is smart only to have dumb people go crazy for it, you can bet there’ll be hell to pay, and MGMT’s Congratulations is that hell.

The cover, a modern, psychedelic reimagining of Japanese artist Hokusai’s iconic woodblock print, The Great Wave, is so obvious in its appeal to a smarter audience that you just know this album is going to take sucking to an entirely different level.  Throw in the fact that they’re not releasing any singles from the album in a pretentious effort to make listeners hear the album as complete body of work and you start to get an idea of the severity of the situation.  A direct MGMT quote, from NME magazine: “There definitely isn’t a ‘Time to Pretend‘ or a ‘Kids‘ on the album. We’ve been talking about ways to make sure people hear the album as an album in order and not just figure out what are the best three tracks, download those and not listen to the rest of it.”  That’s right, these deluded assholes have already stated that there are purposely no songs on their new album that resemble the best two songs from their last album.  Are you excited yet?  That’s like an ice cream vendor inventing a chocolate-watermelon-flavored popsicle with modest commercial expectations, only to see his new flavor become wildly popular, and, to follow up his unintentional success, he comes up with a fart-flavored shitsicle.  On purpose.  No thanks, MGMT.  If you’re still around for a third album, maybe I’ll check that out.  Until then, keep your shitsicle away from me.  It’s starting to melt.

Overall rating:  0/10

Immature reinterpretation of the title:  Crapgratulations

Our Family Wedding

If there’s one thing the world doesn’t need, it’s another movie about families clashing over a cross-cultural wedding.  If there are two things the world doesn’t need, they’re another movie about families clashing over a cross-cultural wedding and Carlos Mencia.  If there are three things the world doesn’t need, they’re another movie about families clashing over a cross-cultural wedding, Carlos Mencia, and Carlos Mencia again, just for good measure.  This guy is about as comedically innovative as a fart.  If someone could fart with a Mexican accent, he’d be out of business.

That Mencia isn’t even the biggest problem with the movie is, in itself, a pretty troublesome sign.  If Mencia’s involvement is the good news, it makes one hesitant to speculate about the bad.  If you were informed via rape-telegram that you have incurable AIDS, and that’s the good news, would you really ask to hear the bad news?  If you would, then take a seat in the center of this movie’s target demographic, right between the other two people.  Scoot over, it’s getting cramped.

What’s actually the biggest problem with this movie is the obvious couple-from-disparate-worlds storyline.  Instead of putting two people together who have different philosophical beliefs or moral codes or views about the world, Hollywood once again takes the easiest route and gives us two characters from a different race, as if race alone is enough to define them.  Instead of a black man and a white woman falling for each other, though, Our Family Wedding gives us a black man and a Hispanic woman, a twist so weak it would lose a pickle-jar-opening contest to your arthritic grandparent. You don’t need to pay fifteen dollars to see two hours of rehashed racial stereotypes.  You already know them all.  It’s not like they’re coming up with new ones.  I doubt anyone’s walking out of the theater saying, “I didn’t know that about Mexicans.”  They like beans.  Save your money.

A conspiratorial cynic might see a correlation between this movie’s blacks-versus-Hispanics theme and the semi-recent news that, in the U.S., white people will no longer make up the majority of the population by 2050.  In many cities, counties, and states across the country this is already the case.  Pitting the second- and third-largest racial demographics against each other in uninspired movies to distract them from their increasing voting power is an admirably shrewd tactic.  Ultimately, though, it fails, since to qualify as a distraction, the movie would have to be at least somewhat entertaining.  And it’s not.  But it’s a start.  We’ve still got forty more years.

Overall rating:  1/10

Predictive reinterpretation of the title:  Our Career Funeral

Unoriginal-Despite-Her-Best-Efforts Girl

I almost passed this girl’s picture up while scanning for idiots to make fun of, thinking that she was probably dressed up to go to some sort of themed party.  My instincts forced me to take another look, though, and I realized there was something more going on here.  It seems highly unlikely that anyone would invite this girl to an actual party.   But even if by some unlikely stroke of fortune she was accidentally invited to a party and was merely dressing for the occasion, the theme of that party would have to be Teal, Fishnet, and Converse, and I know those parties are generally boys only.  The conclusion I am propelled toward is that this girl is not dressed up to go out.  She is going to a party, though.  An idiot party.  With a guest list of one.

This girl is a prime example of an unmentioned epidemic that has been sweeping the nation’s high schools and colleges.  Despite the fact that every person is, at the core level, exactly the same as every other person, people still have a strong desire to feel original and unique.  This desire is not unknown to advertisers, who feed on it to sell you things, urging you to ‘express your uniqueness’ by purchasing their product, a purchase that will make you just as unique as the five million other people who have already expressed their uniqueness.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with the desire to be unique. However, the expression of that desire is where idiots like this girl come into play.  Young people today are confusing superficial uniqueness with substantial uniqueness.  Rather than being indicators of a unique personality, gaudy outfits, loud tattoos, and uncomfortable piercings have become the personality.  And it’s usually a shitty one.  Am I saying that just because this girl’s outfit looks like it has an extra 23^rd chromosome she automatically has a terrible personality?  Yes.

Overall rating:  1/10

Probably named:  Yawna Borington

Jenny Sanford – Staying True

I’m not sure how many people outside of South Carolina are familiar with the Sanford situation.  It was a big deal when the story broke last June, but the media, as it tends to do, over-reported the story to the point of oblivion before it quickly and thoughtlessly moved on to the next pseudo-event, as if nothing had even happened.  Essentially, Governor Sanford was missing for a week because he was visiting his longtime mistress in Argentina.  Whether or not this is anybody’s business or even newsworthy is beside the point, although I tend to fall in the “Who Cares?” camp.  What’s really galling is that Jenny Sanford, the betrayed wife, had the nerve to publicly play the victim card to the tune of a $2 million book deal.  For that kind of money you’d think they could have designed a cover that didn’t look like some rural high-schooler’s tacky senior photo.

Sunset lighting?  Blue jeans?  Field of wheat?  They’re trying to appeal to Middle-American values with subtle heartland symbolism, only they forgot the subtle, earning themselves the coveted One Dimensional Critic Sledgehammer Of Subtlety Award.  By packaging her as a working-class American, they’re hoping you forget where she actually came from.  Although she’s from a small town in Illinois, she’s definitely not working class.  Her great-grandfather co-founded the Skil Corporation and her father was president when it was sold to Emerson for mega-bucks.   She went on to become Vice President of M&A at investment bank Lazard Freres.  While I don’t know what that means, I’m willing to bet I’m not alone.  Most of us working-class Americans are too busy sitting in fields of wheat to learn about the different departments involved in investment banking.

What’s even more upsetting than her hypocritical posturing is the idea behind the book, that by experiencing infidelity, Jenny Sanford is now somehow qualified to not only give advice to others, but to charge them for it.  Having something happen to you doesn’t make you an expert in that field, and it most certainly doesn’t qualify you to charge for your expertise.  I’ve been rained on before, but I doubt anyone’s going to pay me to make meteorological predictions.  Besides, unless you also happen to be a politically-connected multimillionaire, her advice probably isn’t going to be very applicable.  A sample passage*, “When I discovered my husband’s infidelity, I tried to take my mind off it.  I rode my purebred albino horse across my 500-acre property, flew my private rocket to the moon, and also bought an island.  Nothing helps mend a broken heart like purchasing an island.”

While her book may not be helpful for those trying to get over marital infidelity, I’d be willing to suggest it to anyone seeking advice on how to write a shitty book or be a shameless phony.

*Authorial speculation

Overall Rating:  0/10

Pathetically obvious reinterpretation of the title:  Staying False

Hyper-color Sunglasses Guy

Who’s more to blame for this guy’s disastrous look?  The guy himself or the person taking the photograph?  I’m a big advocate of personal responsibility, so my initial inclination is to blame him for looking like such an idiot.  But what if he’s developmentally challenged?  And colorblind?  And has some rare genetic disease that causes his hair to grow out in a style that cruelly echoes There’s Something About Mary?  Then the true villain is the photographer, who’s not only enabling him, but taking advantage of this poor, retarded, tragically-outfitted man.  It would take some serious courage and a delusional amount of narcissism to ask someone to take a picture of you dressed like this, though, and while this guy looks like he’s got delusional narcissism in spades, the faux-fur trenchcoat gives him away as a coward.  It’s safe to assume he set his camera on a timer and took the picture himself.  Which means he’s just a self-obsessed asshole.

I’ve never seen sunglasses like this before in my life.  At first I thought they were Photoshopped, but I have to believe if this guy was going to go to all the trouble of enhancing his sunglasses, he would have fixed his saggy jaw line and the droopy left side of his mouth.  Which means they’re real.  And probably expensive.  If he’d taken the money he spent on his turtleneck sleeping bag and reading rainbow shades and saved it instead, he might have had enough to buy a likable personality.  But probably not.

Overall rating:  1/10

Probably named:  Jack King Hoffmen

The Irrepressibles – Mirror Mirror

The cover for The Irrepressibles’ album Mirror Mirror instantly sets the tone.  Featuring four-quadrant symmetry, something that’s never been attempted in the entire history of album covers, their design lets you know that The Irrepressibles are out to break all the rules.  It’s apparent from the way that the word ‘mirror’ mirrors itself that lead singer and main lyricist Fishton Horseface III isn’t interested in writing traditional songs.  Exploring the idea of reflections, challenging the validity of appearances, and questioning the meaning of meaning itself, these are but a few goals that The Irrepressibles have in their sights.  While it’s ultimately up to each individual listener to decide if they’ve succeeded, I will say they’ve certainly made me question the meaning of several concepts, chief among them rhythm, song-structure, and talent.

While a quick Google Image search of the band won’t excuse this guy’s appearance, it will at least shed some light on the reasoning behind it.  The Irrepressibles apparently see themselves as a modern day pop incarnation of the traveling minstrel shows popular in medieval times. One can only assume they’re doing this unironically.  Which is a shame.  As a meta-performance-art piece about the grandiose pomposity of the current baroque pop scene, The Irrepressibles are pure genius.  As a serious band, though, they’re a joke.  And a joke is only funny if the person telling it knows it’s a joke.  Otherwise it’s just sad.  And The Irrepressibles are the saddest joke around.

Overall rating:  1/10

Insulting re-imagining of a famous Snow White line:  Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is the worst band of them all?  The Irrepressibles.