Karmin, Karmin, Karmin, Karmin, Karmin Chameleon

It’s fitting that my first blog post here (like my first blog post ever) would be the result of Zooey Deschanel—that short, dark glass of quirk. Now that we’re getting older, Katie and I have started watching Saturday Night Live again to stay on top of what the kids are talking about. Or at least we DVR it and watch it on Sunday afternoons.

Second from left.

This week’s show was hosted by Ms. Deschanel and included at least three skits that lasted the right amount of time as well as an appearance from Nic Cage which further proved that he is awesome at playing Nic Cage.

Then the musical guest arrived—Karmin. Here I have a confession to make. In my darker moments, I consider myself a musical snob. Not that I have high standards for what qualifies as art of the musical variety. I just think that I know more about music than you. This belief stems largely from the fact that I read pitchfork.com on the reg and once hosted my own college radio show (like I said, my darker moments). Due to my fleshy physique, my lack of tattoos, and my ability to enjoy Jersey Shore non-ironically, however, I’ve never been accepted by the truly hipster elite.

I totally knew this post when it was just a Google Doc.

Either way, I was shocked that I would have never heard of a musical guest on SNL. Lana del Rey? Please. Played it for Katie in the car back when I still had a car (See, that comment is funny because my car was stolen). Sleigh Bells? Totally bought Treats like eighteen months ago. But Karmin? Nothing. I panicked for a second. Where did they come from? Apparently I need to spend more time on Reddit and Youtube.

You had me at hello, Imgur.

Karmin performed one of their originals, an upbeat number entitled “Brokenhearted.” As the lead singer bopped around on-stage, the place in my soul where I put my hands up because they’re playing my song started to stir. An eyebrow was raised when she broke out into a rapid-fire rap in the middle of the song, but by the end, I barely even reacted when she ended several lines with “Cheerio!” and put her fingers in the shape of a monocle over her eye. The second performance was equally bouncy. After the dour and dreary del Rey performance or the overwrought Coldplay experience, it was nice that people seemed genuinely excited to be on stage. I figured I might check out a clip of the songs on Itunes, but that would be about it.

Shortly afterward, however, I found the following Gawker article which gleefully proclaimed: “The Hater’s Guide to Karmin!”

Is that what the White Stripes look like?

Written by Max Read as a mock interview in which he gets to enact his dream date and ask all of the questions as well as provide all of the answers, the article attempts to eviscerate Karmin for being… too cutesy? Too internet-y? Too plastic? If that was it, I could let the article slide. People like some types of music and hate others. For example, I think that people who like the song “Pumped Up Kicks” exist on the musical spectrum between those who collect DMB concert tickets into scrapbooks and those who put Pink songs on mixtapes for potential significant others because of their emotional impact. So I get being judgmental when it comes to music.

But Max Read couldn’t stop at just knocking down these Berklee College of Music graduates for their “cutesy covers of popular rap and R&B songs.” And it wasn’t enough that he trashed their physical appearance: “What’s wrong with her face? ‘Experts tell me that Heidemann [the lead singer] suffers from a tragic syndrome known as ‘theater kid’ that manifests itself as extreme and frequent facial and gestural tics.’”

Finally, someone knocks those bully theater kids down a peg.

Side note: It seems problematic that critics still go straight for commenting on a female artist’s physical features as a sure fire of discrediting them. Lana del Rey totally has plumper lips than she should! Kelly Clarkson has weight problems! Madonna looks like ET!

Then Read slammed in what I thought would be the final nail in the coffin: “Yeah. It’s kind of horrible, isn’t it? The way they’re desperate for you to like them, and you’re desperate to (sic) for the song to stop playing so you can set fire to the entire planet for having provided an opportunity for something like this to exist.”

Oh snap! Someone must have been that editor at his college newspaper! You know. The one who thinks being a newspaper editor in college is actually something worth putting on a resume. So far, the article is Gawker-esque in all the right ways—snarky, vengeful, and poorly edited. 

Then Read reaches out for the journalist gut shot: “I don’t want to guess at people’s motives for liking this cover, because that would require me to think about this cover, but isn’t it kind of shocking that so many people who claim to hate rap or R&B suddenly like it when it’s performed by approachable young white people playing ‘real instruments’? Just something weird to think about.”

That is something weird to think about. I was under the impression that since Obama was elected, racism doesn’t exist, but I was willing to go along for the ride. The real instruments part seems odd as in most of their videos and in their performances, the couple stuck to microphones, a cowbell, and a keyboard, but I suppose those instruments can be classified as real. Does it matter that all of the songs that Karmin covers were already Billboard hits and largely accepted by the mainstream? Or that they also cover such non-rap standards as “Firework” and “King of Wishful Thinking”? What makes them approachable? Because they’re white? Because they smile? Oh well, maybe he was just trying to flavor up a throw-away piece with some of the gravitas that invoking racism can bring to the table. He wouldn’t be the first.

But does Read really think the people who like Karmin are racist? Back to Mr. Read: “No, not at all. Just that you, know, for some people, there may be some unspoken cultural biases at play. Like racism.”

What he said.

Well now that you bring it up. I did think there was something Klan-y about their performance. In the sense that both groups start with a K and are theatrical. So people who like rap covers by white people are racist? To be fair, Read supports his case with zero evidence—even of the anecdotal nature. Both he and Maura Johnston, a music critic from The Village Voice who calls Karmin’s music a “pile of garbage and fronting,” seem very concerned that Karmin lack street cred, having come from Berklee and not making their way up the musical totem pole the real way—ie car commercials or being born in Brooklyn.

I wonder if it’s not threats of racism but that conservative urge to criticize intelligentsia which drives these snide dismissals of Karmin. If Amy Heidelmann and Nick Noonan weren’t engaged white folk from Berklee’s ivory tower but strung out heroin addicts or vegan chefs from Williamsburg, would they have more street cred? Both Read and Johnston attack Karmin for their name which stems from a Latin word carmen meaning "song" with an altered spelling to “hint at ‘karma’” (Thanks Wiki!). Johnston’s response? “The only thing I can say to this…is ‘Shut up, college.’” 

Shut up college? C’mon Maura, that seems downright Coulter-esque of you. I know all the really good names like Lady Gaga and Hanson were taken, but what’s wrong with a little Latin now and again? Where would Gawker and The Village Voice be if it wasn’t for overly educated liberal arts majors with a bastion of cultural allusions and a dearth of real world skills?

Maybe it’s that chimerical notion of authenticity in music. Willie Nelson has it. Taylor Swift doesn’t. Or at least that’s what music critics might want you to think. Is it that when Heidemann sings “You're so misunderstood/ Cause you're so complex,/ you and your complex/ and you claim you’re so low key/ Well you coulda fooled me, Mister TMZ,” she must be “fronting,” but when Miley tells us about not getting the memo, we really feel it? Is Rihanna’s “We Found Love” deeper lyrically because we know what happened with Chris Brown? Would Karmin be more musically “serious” if they wore meat on their clothes and had less of an internet following?

Has anyone actually read my lyrics?

Why do I care about Karmin you ask? Why have I been listening to “Brokenhearted” and “Crash Your Party” for most of the night/today? Maybe it’s because Karmin samples the beat from Black Sheep’s “The Choice is Yours”, and I would listen to anything sung over those bass lines— even Max Read’s sloppy, race-baiting piece of fronting garbage. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t mind enjoying music contrived to make me enjoy it. Because that’s the beauty of pop music. Sure, it’s bred in a factory, and yes, it’s formulaic, but man is it ever delicious.

Calvin and Hobbes, 26 years later...

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Awkward moments that kind of make you either want to cry or laughhysterically.

1. When your headphones aren't plugged in and the entire office hears you start playing Salt & Peppa's "Push It" on blast


2. When you take said iPhone to the Apple Service and the first song that comes up to play is Britney's Hit Me Baby. (Even better when the second is that ridiculous joke song, "I know my calculus, it says you + me = us" )

Not joking.

3. When you admit the more embarrassing additions to your iPod to an entire blogging community.


4. When you take the dogs out wearing a pair of fleece pants, glasses, and bed hair at 3am and the most beautiful man in the world watches you trip over their leashes.


5. When you try to use a q-tip and have your earbuds in (oh wait, that's another post)


6. When you fall off of a pyramid (hahaha, oh right another post :P)


7. When you think a guy is leaning in to kiss you because it may or may not have been a date, and then you lean in too and he doesn't. (Seriously, I'll stop now, I promise)


8. When you receive an email from one of your contractors, not in reference to your work, but with a "your boss said you were single, and so is one of my reps, and we thought you'd really hit it off... Can I give him your number?" and you realize that your office is trying to pimp you out. :P

9. While mobile app text typing this blog post on the metro, you nearly miss the metro doors closing and have to make a beeline to get off, mowing people down so as to not have to take the Greenline into ANACOSTIA.


10. When you get an urgent email FROM YOUR MOTHER with info about the Pfizer birth control recall and the subject line is not, "Does this affect you?" which would be embarrassing enough, but "Do you think you're pregnant??"


Doom.

Keeping Up With the Joneses

All Goya with a Touch of Picasso

RAG Week, Galway, Ireland
March 2004

I am in the middle of a bar hop during Ireland's Raise-A-Grand Week, in which all the pubs open early and close late.  (Also, something about charity.)  I am the caboose in the Lady Train that is winding/pushing its way through the crowded pub, when I am stopped by a young man on a bar stool.  "Excuse me," he says.  "I just wanted to stop you and tell you that you're lovely-"  I made motions to continue moving towards the back of the pub where my friends gathered.  "No!  Wait.  I didn't want to come out here tonight, I just broke up with my girlfriend, but my lads made me, and I'm so glad they did,   because you're lovely, and-" he pauses and gestures me closer for effect, "- I would tell a girl that I loved her to get in her pants, but I wouldn't tell her she was lovely."

 507 Main, Belmar, NJ
August 2005
It's the summer, it's last call, and I'm out in Belmar, which means I'm looking around for my friends while avoiding eye contact with anybody else.  A young man saunters up to me.

"Excuse me, but you have a boyfriend, don't you?"

I size him up.  "Yes," I lie.

"I could tell.  But I have to tell you....[pauses for effect]....I'm better than your boyfriend."

"Oh?" I said.

"Yeah....I work at Z100."

I immediately perked up.  "Are you Greg T the Frat Boy?!"  (Sorry for the geographic-centered humor there but I assure you that was a hoot for those who ever listened to Z100 in the morning in the late 1990s.)

AOL is the post-Singled Out Jenny McCarthy of the tech world

Yesterday I was at a meeting on innovation (what kind and for whom shall remain nameless), for which a former executive of AOL was a featured speaker.

And in like, a non-ironic sense.

With this one fact we have all of the critical differences between my generation and the one before me when it comes to anything related to the internet and technology.

When businessmen-of-a-certain-age hear former executive of AOL, they think of AOL's soaring success as a new business.  They think of how they were the revolutionary force, getting the average middle-income home up and online.

When someone my age hears AOL and innovation together, they snicker.

Let's be honest: if you know someone who still uses an .aol email address, you know one other thing about that person, and that's that they don't actually "use" their .aol email address.  "Here's my email," they say to you, anxiously peering over their glasses at the paper as they scribble it down. "DSmthdoglvr2834209380@aol.com....or was that DSmthdoglvr283420988?  I'll check at home and let you know."

But they never do, because they've forgotten their password.  And once that hurdle has been cleared, there's too much spam in their inbox and they hurry offline to avoid AOL's featured web performance of Nickleback, the AOL of rock/pop bands.

I remember reading an interview with Andrew Breitbart in GQ, who was talking about what it's like to have ADD and be on the computer:

I've got maybe four or five instant messenger conversations going on at the same time. I've got about five or six tabs in Firefox going. I'm probably talking on my cell phone while I'm monitoring my Fantasy baseball team, knowing the pitch count of the Milwaukee Brewers/Cincinnati Reds game.

Once again, generational differences.  I am 29 years old.  I may not have clinical ADD, but to paraphrase the Bloggess, I'm easily distracted and I have an internet connection, and that's basically the same thing.  Right now I'm writing this post, while watching a documentary on North Korean gymnastics, while on gchat, while researching the connection between "More than a Feeling," the Pixies and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."  I can't tell you how many tabs I have open in Firefox because then I'd have to shift over and I don't feel like doing that, but be assured that it's way more than five.  I don't even have my music on, because I can hear David's from the next room. And all this is completely normal.  

"But Katie," you may say.  "That's your leisure time.  Andrew Breitbart has a site thousands of people read a day, whereas your work day consists of trying to pretend that your legendary research skills are something more than the ability to access Google. And let's not pretend that anyone besides the four of us read this site."  

Well, touche, readers, I say.  But if I may expand on that thought (and I will), I'd like to point out that Andrew Breitbart is a total asshat.  But also, what he points to as ADD looks to someone my age as normal bordering on focused.

What amazes me is how quickly we are approaching the point where executives will be people who were raised on the internet.  The little tricks that my generation has used throughout our interactions with our parents, teachers and bosses since we were 14 (the computer ate my homework) just isn't going to cut it.  Things move fast.  Mark Zuckerberg no longer stands for innovation.  Facebook is the old.  Google isn't even the new.   

But remember when we all had AOL accounts?  I think back now to how eager I was to sign up for my screen name, and how  many of those free month discs we went through in my home.  Hell, most of my good friendships to this day were probably solidified through endless hours of aim conversations.   I still use that same AOL screenname as my sign-in and tag for most of my internet interactions.  But what if I had the same reaction to AOL when I was 14 as I did to Facebook at 21, or Twitter today?  I'd be a pretty isolated, sad case.  So maybe I should just hop on board and accept the inevitable.

Or maybe not.

Holiday Bits and Pieces

So I haven't been posting much lately, and I apologize for that.  I'm having a hard time shaking off the holiday cobwebs.  However, here's a collection of bits and pieces that I couldn't quite flesh into full posts, but, now that I'm A Blogger, I have a compulsive need to share:

• I've been spending an increasing amount of my time daydreaming about what I would do if I won the lottery.  Won it big-time, like $170 million.  These dreams have gone past the point where I have been planning which friends I would hire as personal assistants, at what salary, and how I would have to get a good tax attorney to review all the scholarships I would create.  This is all well and good, except I just got alarmed thinking that I was really behind on what I had to today and then I realized that I was thinking of my imaginary "buy 5 houses" list and not my real work one.  
• Speaking of winning the lottery, my million dollar idea, which you are not to steal: Congressional Guess Who.  TELL ME THAT WOULDN'T GO OVER BIG WITH THE HILL NERDS.  Think about it: Do you have inappropriate relationships with people outside of your marriage?  Are you from New York?  Is it with your staff?   Do you like to tickle?  YOU'RE ERIC!  Copyright pending.
• Sub-point: I plan on learning to properly use the free Photoshop-type software I downloaded just to try to get that game to happen.  It will be my  holiday gift to you all.
• Speaking of which, this will be David and my first Christmas together, and people have been asking if we're going to get a tree.  "I want to get a Charlie Brown Christmas tree," I always answer, which serves the joint purpose of 1) answering the question and 2) screening the person, because if he doesn't know what I'm talking about, then I know to stay the hell away from that jerk.
•  And for another nice transition, I saw my old D.A.R.E. officer, who was way past inappropriately drunk, out at the bar over Thanksgiving.  I'm not sure what to do with that information (and that is far from the whole story), but I thought you should all know.
• There are two young women in my office who have done nothing for the last two months but talk about the calories they consume each day.  I need to stop this and I do not know how.  Please feel free to leave your ideas, because if I have to listen to one more rendition of "I'm having salad for lunch, just the lettuce, no dressing," I will scream, and this office already thinks I'm awkward.
• Speaking of which, on Monday two women in my office were talking about what to do with leftover turkey.  They were standing in the middle of a narrow hallway, which means I had to basically walk through them to get to my desk.  I felt the need to contribute, so like a 3 year old with Aspberger's, I enthusiastically yelled, "REUBENS!"  There was silence for a good 5 seconds.  
• It's after Thanksgiving, which means I can now troll you all with this little thought: I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes...

Hey little heroes, summer's long but I guess it ain't very sweet around here anymore

Somewhere out there is a security tape that would have taken place at your local neighborhood Windmill.  For those of you not in the know, The Windmill is a mecca of fast food delight found only in the cosmic center of the universe.

The Windmill is famous for its cheesefries, and, in my head, a fantastically low-cost, unintentionally hilarious commercial that they shot in the '90s in which they declared that there was "a location located conveniently near you!" followed by someone proclaiming that they "travel over 50 miles for the cheesefries!"

 Anyway, I imagine the security tape's footage is rather grimy, both with age and because it's on a VHS.  Everything is black, white and shades of gray, except for the bright yellow polos splattered with ice cream worn by a group of overly tan blonde kids.   They are slowly passing bulging white paper bags over the counter and receiving baskets of greasy delight back.

The footage then fades out.

A Vocal Majority

There are people protesting on Wall Street, and they're not even sure what they want, they just know that they have a lot to protest.  And it's just going to get bigger.

 At least, before it gets colder.