Monday, July 30, 2007

Music: Garbage - Right Between the Eyes
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I'll admit it. There are certain aspects of society and popular culture about which I am nothing short of a total hater. Cookie cutter ho-bag clothing on 12 year old girls, emo/scene music, the reverence for professional sports players....I completely lose all rationality and cannot be argued with when people defend these things.

I got that challenged a couple times this past Friday.

First was in the realm of music. There's nothing I enjoy more than making fun of scene kids. They're walking targets. The kind of people even dorky little me would not have felt bad laughing at in high school. But anyway, on Friday night I had a really random urge to hear this old Joy Division song called "Love Will Tear Us Apart." It's a terrible song. You can't understand a word of it and the 80's-tastic synthesizer beats are laughable...but I *really* wanted to hear it again. Sometimes things are so terrible that they're awesome. As I was downloading it I realized...that band "Fall Out Boy" did a cover of it. I'd heard it before. It somehow manages to be more unintelligible than the original...I wondered what else the Kings of Scene could provide in terms of laughter.

So I checked out the new album and there was one song...I can't even remember what it was called but...It made fun of Scene. The band...that pretty much invented Scene....was making fun of Scene...and the song was listenable! My world was rocked. I didn't know how to deal. Still not a fan of the band at large, but that one song is okay enough to make me rethink my haterism for about five seconds.

Earlier that evening, my parents and I went out to eat. Somehow we got on the topic of "stocks we own" and my father randomly asked me what I thought of Abercrombie and Fitch. "Oh God...where do I start?" I said, and went on to outline how much I hated their clothes, marketing strategies, and the atmosphere of the stores where the music is loud on purpose so as to put you in some kind of trendy trance. I went on for about five minutes and he started chuckling. "Well. I think you might want to change your attitude. I bought that stock years ago after that big scandle they had with the so-called indecent pictures on the bags...The money we've gotten from that basically funded about a year of college for you on its own. What do you have to say to that?"

"Hey," I said. "If idiotic white kids with too much money and not enough individuality want to dress like Hamptons Hookers and underaged frat boys, I like to know that I'm at least making money off their stupidity."

"Cheers," said my mother.

Sometimes, you just can't stop the hate.
This transmission logged byErisSaid on 12:37 PM

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