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The most meaningful time Amy Chua (the much reviled and read "Tiger Mother" of recent controversy to the tune of over 7,000 comments on her book's first published excerpt) makes a person cry in her latest book, it is not either of her daughters being raised by Chua's iron fist who are spilling the tears. It's a stranger at a party, who leaves after hearing Chua tell a story about calling one of her daughters "garbage." After seeing that reaction and otherwise receiving information on how offensive her behavior can come off (she hurts other mothers' feelings repeatedly as she denies invitations for playdates on behalf of her girls), I have no doubt that she knew that Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother was the book she had to write. With dark humor and Ann Coulter-like provocation, Chua plays up her own ghoulishness on every page. In addition to the countless things that by Western eyes look like terrible things to say to one's child, she informs us that she knows how to use a chainsaw (a product of obeying her father strictly!) and probably caused the death of a pair of rabbits her husband bought her daughters that she never had interest in caring for ("Eventually, the rabbits mysteriously escaped," is how she ominously concludes that story). She describes her intonation as vicious and herself as "compulsively cruel" in a book whose surface objective is to defend her take on the "Chinese way" of parenting (readers should obviously beware of any cultural study that limits itself to one subject). For someone who claims that she's "not very good at enjoying life," she sounds like she's having a blast.
It used to be that I'd do morning-after awards show posts saying, "In lieu of my normal write-up, I tweeted about whatever was on last night." Now I always do that. So, in lieu of nothing, here's my throw to my Twitter for my Golden Globes commentary. It features gif cameos and is about as valuable as any series of tweets about one thing, which is to say: not very. Whatever. I can't change who I am.
Credit where it's due: fourfour as you know it would be radically different were it not for the work of Derrick Beckles, the trash maestro behind TV Carnage. His Casual Fridays visual mixtape of fucked-up TV and movie clips strung together with savant-like attention and witty free association gave me a tangible sense of how much fun you could have and entertainment you could provide with video-editing. The only thing that came close to influencing me as much, outside of the work of Russ Meyer (which, I hope, permeates everything I do, not just the frenetic editing) is TVgasm's supercut of Julie Chen's "But first..."s (simply put, it showed me the joy in repetition). I'd argue that not only would this blog look different were it not for Beckles, but the Internet would in general -- his diabolical scavenging defined an essential online sensibility.
While TV Carnage certainly has a web presence (alongside the Street Boners of Gavin McInnes, who similarly influenced so much bandwidth of hipster-fashion discourse with his "DOs and DON'Ts" in Vice), ironically, it is in long form and on DVD that Beckles truly shines. Let's Work It Out!!!, his reel of work-out video footage, is his masterpiece. The thesis of the reel is delivered by an introductory clip: "If you're expecting another tedious how-to instructional tape, you're in for an entertaining surprise. So, whether you're here to learn, or just to look, stay with us and let us show you how to pump it." Over the next 70 minutes, Beckles teases the entertaining ridiculousness out of the exercise-video genre in all of its self-affirming, ab-busting, career-desperate, porn-star starring, homoerotic, "buttocks"-saying glory. As a formal exercise, things rarely come this lowbrow/brilliant. Beckles creates instant memes (Cher telling her backup exercisers to shut up because she likes the song that's coming on is used a handful of times to introduce particularly dreadful music) and mashes up sound bites to maximize hilarity ("Kill yourself...and keep on jammin'!"). Along the way is plenty of fake-rap ("My name is Brooklyn and I've perfected / The way to get big things erected"), woeful attempts at fitness by the out-of-shape and in (Traci Lords!), and hot dogs, hot dogs, hot dogs. My only complaints regard the use of footage from sources that aren't workout tapes (like Saved by the Bell and Perfect: commit entirely to your formal exercise or you'll never build your creative muscle to its maximum potential!) and the redundant commentary track included on the DVD. The medium is the mocking!
But these are minor qualms. Let's Work It Out!!! is art. Nobody does this stuff better than Beckles and more people need to realize this. (You can buy it at the TV Carnage store.) As a small sample of what to expect, check out this extra feature that someone (not me!) uploaded to YouTube of Jazzercise's Judi Sheppard Missett being a maniac:
Stuff like this is what keeps me going. Even in '11, Jazzercise still is a wonderful motivator.
The word "club" is never sung (or sing-sung) in Britney Spears' new single "Hold It Against Me." That would be redundant. By now it is a given that if you are pushing a pulsating pop-house track to a contemporary audience, you (and your narrator) are doing it from the club. Britney watches her object of lust from across the room, her favorite song is on, but she's looking to escape the crowd (unlike her contemporaries, she's not about to stick around, toss off unspecific observations about it and call it a day). Brit's lyrics are not special from any poetic standpoint, but they are remarkable within the context of pop. I predict that "Against" is as close to cutting the crap as popular dance music will get all year.
Britney's no vocal interpreter (the most character we hear from her here comes when she intones "hayzayyyy!"), but there is something wonderfully synergistic about the way she's performing on this track. Her social aggression ("Hey! Over there! Please forgive me! If I'm coming on too strong!") is met by a backing track of appropriately aggressive mechanical pounding and grinding, and further confirmed by Brit's bellowing (or at least whatever she can muster that approximates bellowing). Bravado trumps melody until the chorus, where the beat falls out, Brit's doe eyes grow three sizes and the desperation at the heart of her boldness is revealed: "If I said my heart was beating loud / If we could escape the crowd somehow / If I said I want your body now / Would you hold it against me?" (She's a woman, but not yet not a girl, too.) The lines that follow are hilarious in that they make me wonder if Calgon would serve as a backup plan should this dude reject her ("‘Cause you feel like paradise / And I need a vacation tonight!”), but what fun would listening to Britney Spears be if it didn't involve laughing at her at some point?
Her purring and cooing during the mind-wobbling dubstep breakdown is no joke, though -- she injects this dabbling in that genre with a sexiness that is so foreign, it makes sense that it's coming from an American. The breakdown itself is a gutsy move, as it introduces an unfamiliar, lopsided rhythm to both the track itself and much of Britney's listening audience outside of the UK. It's just one of several thrilling dynamic shifts in this instant classic. I love the half-time beats that come after the dubstep. The chorus breakdowns, build-ups and Matrix-like segues of hang time are tried-and-true methods of manipulation, but that makes them no less thrilling, just as a roller coaster taking its time to climb to a peak makes the subsequent drop no less thrilling. When the song leaves the aforementioned half-time breakdown to come crashing back in for one last chorus, paradise is found.
Britney's songs usually take some listens to get used to -- they tend to be weirdly specific and thus anti-anthemic ("Womanizer" may be an exception, but it'd be more universal, for example, were it about womanizers). "Hold It Against Me" upholds this lyrical tendency (it's seriously about a dude she sees that she likes, the end) but everything besides the lyrics makes "Against" an epic anthem despite itself. There hasn't been a time since the disco era that dance songs have been as commercially viable (and thus abundant) as they are now, and yet there's come to be so much uniformity in lyrics and sound that the form has become about as boring as being in an actual club (I'm sorry, it's true!). "Hold It Against Me" is exciting within itself (I'd love to hear what twists and turns this endlessly changing thing would take were it extended by a few minutes) and within pop music, period. As long as we get a track like this here and there to break up the tedium, the Great Dance Music Renaissance lives. All hail the queen?
I've watched the 1977 Karen Arthur movie The Mafu Cage about a half dozen times since it was reissued on DVD late last year, and I still don't know what the fuck a Mafu is. I believe it is the name Carol Kane's Cissy character gives to all of the creatures she keeps in a cage in her house and eventually murders because she doesn't like being touched. These creatures are usually apes but sometimes humans. Oh, and she doesn't always dislike being touched: she actually enjoys being touched by her sister, who she has sex with, except when she does that, she does most of the touching.
This movie is so fucking weird!
