AGAINST APPLAUSE: CULTIVATING AN AESTHETIC OF CONTEMPT

"Ever had the feeling you've been cheated?"—Johnny Rotten

by Andy Nowicki

I have written about the internecine war between white youth of the 80s: “punk” vs. “metal.” That earlier article, this subject functioned as an as introduction to Duran Duran’s 2011 “neo-retro” album All You Need Is Now, summarized the differences thusly:

If you were a youth in the ‘80s—as some of us may be old enough to remember—you simply weren’t allowed to like both Metal and Punk at the same time. The sort of kids who were into Metal (who had the rest of us outnumbered, it always seemed) tended to be less thoughtful or reflective, and more swaggering and macho, while we “Punk” kids liked to style themselves as intellectual and artsy.

THE NEXT LIZARD KING

"I am the lizard king. I can't do anything."

by Colin Liddell

Every once in a while you see it. Some bright spark, who, through overwork, over exposure, or taking the wrong chemicals at the right time, ends up frying his brain while also activating his messianic lobe. The most famous example is the legendary David Icke, once a humble TV presenter, who woke up one day, looked into his bowl of corn flakes, and decided that the world was run by shape-shifting "space lizards."

"THEY CAN'T TAKE AWAY MY DIGNITY"

The greatest love of all...

by Andy Nowicki

After several painful years of committing what may be called slow-motion suicide, pop singer Whitney Houston has perished at the age of 48, another wretchedly pitiful casualty of celebrity self-induced crapulence. Her burial earlier this month was accompanied by the same sort of flamboyant pomp and colorful fanfare that attended the funeral of Michael Jackson three years ago, and many of the usual suspects were on hand to exploit the tragedy of an early death for the purposes of egregious self-promotion. (Whenever someone Black and famous dies, that tubby walrus-like buffoon Al “Tawana Told the Truth” Sharpton seems to take it as his cue to stick his mug into every TV camera in sight and pontificate in his inimitably greasy way about America’s innumerable social ills, until you wish some renegade reporter would have the decency to smack him over the head with his microphone and yell, “Prophesy to us, O ebony Savior… Who hath struck you?”)

I am not immune to the pathos surrounding Ms. Houston’s demise, and I will pray for her eternal soul. The truth is, though, that her music was crap.