fourfour

Innocence lost

 

Mariah Carey appeared on HSN last night (and will throughout today) to "celebrate" the first anniversary of her HSN debut last year. It was full of yet more moments and love. Facts were learned all around (did you know that Mariah Carey didn't know that there are 26 letters in the alphabet until last night?). But also, as you can see in the video above, there was an added layer of self-consciousness, one pronounced even for a person who won't be filmed in elevators because of the ill effects of "elevator lighting." She came to the fold referencing the fact that her appearance would be edited and put on the Internet (she had previously shouted out to Gawker for Matt Cherette's edit of her July appearance). How...disappointing.

Look, far be it from me to suggest that anyone on earth should refrain from laughing at Mariah Carey, even the woman herself. But this knowingness (the presumptuousness, even!) that people will be obsessively collecting and presenting her appearance to their liking means that it at least behooves her to act goofily. The kind of eccentricity she offers works best when there is a degree of ambiguity ("Oh no she didn't!" becomes a point of rumination), and her being in on the joke turns unintentional comedy to comedy. Truthfully, she didn't feel much less herself, but her awareness of the scrutiny makes the sport of hunting and gathering a little less exciting. I like my food to be moving.

But good on her for having a sense of humor about herself. It's undoubtedly driven by narcissism (Mariah has long been obsessed with those who are obsessed with her), but she's a good sport about such things in a way that someone like Tyra Banks isn't (the only jokes at Tyra's expense can be made by Tyra, and then they aren't jokes they're auto-cunnilingus).

So Mariah is wacky, hyper-self-conscious and better than Tyra Banks. Eh, tell me something I don't know next time.

The diva chain

 

Not to incite a stan war or anything (HAHA, I WOULD LOVE THAT), but the practice of female singers being asked to comment on their peers (or taking it upon themselves to do so) is endlessly fascinating. (Is it sexist to play women off of each other? It it bitchy for women to take the bait? Is it sexist to think that they're bitchy?) So here are a bunch of clips of divas talking about divas. I gave myself an organizational rule when assembling this: The person speaking in each clip must have been talked about in the preceding clip.

Love, Mariah

 

Mariah Carey was on HSN for eight hours yesterday. She declared her love for what she was selling, Italy, pools, meet and greets and everybody several times over. Here are most of those instances.

My favorite thing about this is how disaffected she sounds throughout, which is typical of her speaking voice, I guess, but not her decidedly affected musical persona. She's serving more vision of blah here.

Oh, look, and here's another HSN cut I did (I could do this everyday!) of Mariah's many "moments." "Retro moment of gypsy whatever" is my fav.

Bonus TWSS moment: Did you know that Nick Cannon beats guys off?

 

For real.

Scanning my life

I spent last week between jobs and attempting to organize my life. I wasn't entirely successful. I learned what I already knew: I have so much crap that I never, ever want to throw away. Below is some of it, scanned. Aren't you lucky, getting to look at my hoarding?

Now that I've made this post sound as unappetizing as possible (no cats were flattened in the making of it, I assure you!), the answer to a recurring question I've been asked more than once -- "What do you look like with hair?" -- is below, among many things that I think are actually interesting...

Festive holidays!

For the past few days, I've been doing pre-holidays visiting at my mom's house. This house is a work-void. Things that normally would take me hours take me days. Hence, the light posting. Please accept this supercut of Mariah Carey saying the word "festive" over 30 times during various recent promo appearances for Merry Christmas II You as the fourfour spin on the televised yule log. Just put this thing on a loop and feel the holidays in your soul and/or nightmares.

On 2010...

In case you haven't been following, all this week, Rob Harvilla, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston and I took part in a critical roundtable series of posts at the Village Voice's Sound of the City blog. It's amazing to be able to write in such great company (I respect all of these people as both writers and friends) and between the five of us, we covered a hell of a lot of the year in music. My particular entries discussed mostly house and R&B, with the latter containing a particularly brutal screed aganist the 2010 Chris Brown revival (I don't want to say I hate anyone...but I fucking hate that guy and his shitty music). Apparently, it ruffled feathers of his fans (I'm staying out of the comments section, but hearing good things about it).

Anyway, it's been a little light on the writing around here this week -- this is just to say why.

The non-credits roll...

 

Above is a clip from last Wednesday's episode of The Insider that Tracie spotted and snagged for me. Though they've added some typical tabloid-TV sparkle wipes, they play the first 20 seconds of my Everything you need to know about Mariah Carey on HSN video from last week. The clips and cuts are identical. I didn't see this episode's credits, so for all I know they maybe said something about the source of the video coming from YouTube (in this clip it sure doesn't seem like they're selling the montage of Mariah talking about her pregnancy as anything but their own). Whatever. Obviously, this happens. And then what happens next is I post about it. It's too much part of the natural order of things to get upset at this point. I'm laughing, really I am.

(And in a weird way, their taking a 20 second clip counts as fair use, I guess, credited or not. Right?)

Update: Via the New York Times Arts Beat blog, The Insider has responded:

As a fast-paced daily news program, we are presented with numerous news items to incorporate into our broadcast. This news item went into our show without a mention of the blog, but we are posting a story on TheInsider.com about the fourfour blog post with a link to the site.

It's nice to be acknowledged!

Mariah Carey: Perfume hater, perfume-bottle collector

Mariah Carey spent about six hours yammering on HSN yesterday, hawking her perfume/jewelery/Christmas album/shoes and complaining about her pregnancy. I watched all of it. Above is everything you possibly would need to know about it -- except for her constant talk about the need to layer lotion underneath perfume, because frankly, that was boring. The rest of it was wondrously fascinating (not really, but I mean, I watched it all). The woman knows how to talk, but even better than that, she knows how to repeat herself. Aw!

A festive heads-up

My commitment to covering Mariah's releases (musical and faux-gastrointestinal, alike) has not lapsed. Instead of appearing in this space, my review of her Christmas album, Merry Christmas II You, appears in this week's Village Voice. You can read it here.

It was the chair, guys!

 

Mariah Carey appeared on HSN this week in a pre-taped interview hawking her Merry Christmas II You album and getting her ass licked by host Colleen Lopez (sample bullshit: Colleen claimed that Mariah looks younger now than she did in 1994, when she recorded her first Christmas album). And speaking of asses, Mariah would like you to know that the noise coming from hers is not of her body but her leather chair. I love how in the clip above, she keeps starting over, clearly thinking that they'd edit out her not-farting, but they kept it in! I'm sure the idea of being possibly mistaken for being just like us has her mortified.