disclaimer: this post is going to sound like i should be wearing thick-framed glasses and a tweed jacket. because i'm a glutton for punishment, i watched the vmas last night for the first time in about 12 years. i'm so out of tune with pop culture that i had no idea who some of these people were until last night. i had heard of iggy azaela, but had no idea what she looked like. best i can tell, shes another lil kim ripoff? who knows. i'm not quite sure if she thinks shes a human being or not. other bands and singers like 5 seconds of summer and ariana grande are so outside my stratosphere that i wouldn't have known they existed unless i tuned in. oh, and this chick wins best rock video? Spoiler she looks friendly. and kim kardashian has no business presenting anything at an award show unless its the avn awards. focus: how in tune are you with pop culture? do you pay attention to any of it? alt. focus: vmas.
i'm still operating under the assumption that tracy chapman is a man and ben harper is white. i'm way behind. seriously though, i don't have any sort of handle on what is going on in the world of pop culture short of what i read on here that sounds interesting enough to check out. at my old job i was the oldest one in the department at 28, you'd have thought i was in the nursing home talking to people who were supposedly in college at the same time i was. who is the seriel killer in training in that photo?
my wife dvred the vmas and the emmys. she says she does it for the fashion. i say she does it because she's really the world's oldest high school student. whatever, if it means i get a couple of hours of video game time, i'm happy. so ends my peripheral involvement with pop culture and i'm happier for it. if i really wanted to know what was going on pop culturally, i'd just see what trending on twitter. it's way easier that way.
i was going to make a similar post, juicy. that awards show is more of a lame duck popularity contest than the oscars and grammies combined. now, i am not a fan of pop music so i'm biased, but holy shit do these acts have no edge. remember when guns n' roses stormed shows like this and 5 scumbags drunk out of their minds sleazed around being awesome? now it's all fashion and personal assistants and spring water. not one second of music was not pre-recorded either. it was all so neutered. pop culture is so far removed from my little bubble. it is so terribly lost on me. i'm not cool, never will be cool again. i'm so un-cool i'm that feminine gas commercial on during the dinner hour. kinda hate everyone who is cool because they really aren't cool, just really, really popular and attractive. i like old school rock and roll and haven't shaved in 2 months. fuck off, kids, i'm playing zz top records today. kim kardashian, god help me, is hot. she is so heinous in every other way, though, including that ludicrous fake ass. chick's cans are fantastic. can we just turn this into a celebrity cleavage thread?
i thought by default, every thread could be the celebrity cleavage thread. i think your girl kim would be well-advised to not pose for pictures next to taller girls. i'm too old to watcht the vma's. i usually read the coverage in ew after the fact, and if there was anything interesting, i'll flip through one of the 173 times they replay it over the next month. every now and then, they'll dig up some older music act for a "collaboration" with a new artist or some kind of reunion that is interesting. i'm just always fascinated that "the kids today" don't even know what the original mtv with actual music videos on rotation was like. yet, somehow the vma's are still a trending topic.
these days pop culture to me is just keeping up with internet memes. most of the "hot" new artist, music, movies, or otherwise, i haven't a clue who the fuck they are. kim kardashian will be a case study in creating a media marketing juggernaut almost out of thin air. she purportedly could make upwards of 85 million this year on her video game. a shitty click along style game with various micro transactions reaping in hundreds of millions of dollars.
twitter is where i honestly get most of my pop culture news. i have a pretty eclectic group of people i follow and so i see alot of stuff pop up. focus: i would say i'm pretty dialed into pop culture. not entirely sure how, i don't read us weekly or people or go on perez hilton, but i waste enough time on the internets that i get exposed to it. and i'm pretty open about liking terrible pop music, so i don't put my head in the sand in that regard. i'm always amazed when people are completely insulated from it though. my coworker this morning informed us that she had never heard "royals". like that song is everywhere, not just the radio. and this girl is 31. and same with iggy, she's everywhere. as for the vmas, i watch them cause they are hilarious. i scroll through twitter on my phone at the same time and laugh my ass off, its one of the best running commentary events of the year depending on your follows. and for all you "image over music these days", i will completely agree that while mtv has veered from the music-centric ways of the 80s and 90s, that guns and roses era was still all image. all those fucking hair bands cared as much volumizer as they did minor scales. whats popular changes and evolves, whatever. the cult of personality around celebrity has gotten worse because of the 24 hour news cycle and social media, but i'm pretty nonplussed by the shrieks of music being worse than in the past. though there is no way in fuck that lorde is as young as they are trying to lead us to believe.
how in the fuck did she get best rock video? isn't there a prerequisite that you have to actually make a rock song to get that award? don't get me wrong, she's a talented young lady, but she is in now way a rock musician. fucking mtv.
focus: because i play dances i have to at least keep well in touch with what's popular amongst youth music. their most popular look right now is swagfag and arianna grande takes up about 50% of my requests from teenagers. pop culture is enraging to keep up with these days. it is youth-dominated as it has been since i was born but somewhere along the line they stole art from the youth and replaced it with brain candy. now there's pre-recorded live performances, one million reality shows and celebrities who achieved their fame simply by being born into rich parents. who in their right mind wants to idolize that? alt-focus the vmas are a card-carrying example of how anybody can be famous. celebrities actually use this "awards" show as a springboard for their career. except instead of wowing the public with an incredible performance instead they do something outlandishly stupid and embarrassing... and it works. look at miley cyrus-- a hack-job, style-stealing stunned cunt who puts on the most i sexually unappealing performance ever...and becomes a sex symbol for it! it's fucking bizarro world. you do something disgusting and fans fed-ex you their undies. you do something stupid and they hand you a mensa membership. you give a shit performance and you win performance of the year. you wear an outfit that a retard wouldn't be caught dead in and you're a pinnacle of fashion. the need to take away the"music" part of the title. mtv stopped giving a shit about music as their message a long time ago. their message is simple: unless you're famous, rich or beautiful you don't matter.
i'm mostly current when it comes to new pop music, thanks to the radio in my shared office. when it comes to t.v. i have no idea, because i just don't watch it. about once a month or so i'll binge on the daily show, the colbert report and orange is the new black and catch up with everything i missed there. other than that the only t.v. i watch is game of thrones, so i have no idea who any actors are or what any of the shows are about. the radio dj's were talking about shows/actors nominated for the emmy's and i had no clue what they were talking about.
itt Spoiler i can only speak from my side of things, but when i was younger i watched whatever was on tv for the hell of it, which probably explains how i knew who some pop stars were. at this point i have no time for that crap, i download exactly what i want to watch, without commercials. it's hard to know what exists outside of my bubble, and i couldn't be happier. the only thing that made me feel old at 26 is referencing basketball players like karl malone and charles barkley, and getting blank looks from the 20 year olds on my rugby team.
people in their 20's like to joke about being old because they're not, meanwhile they're pissing off people who have more life experience... i don't keep up with pop culture, never have, likely never will. you'll never hear me commenting on movies or music. i'm a beer and sports kind of guy. because of this i don't have many friends who are tuned into this sort of stuff. for some reason, when people start talking about a new movie or music my mind just goes to the monkey with symbols.
what i do to not get lost pop culture wise is go to the billboard 200 and just download the top 15 albums, and listen to them through a few times. i'll go back and catch the vmas eventually. great thing to put on when you're doing stuff around the house early in the morning. i have legal instructions to have someone shoot me if i start complaining about music in my day vs now. when it comes to pop culture shit overall, i try to avoid the reality based "personalities". anyone that doesn't have a talent besides being outlandish or ridiculous. my gf was watching the kardashians and one of them bought a ridiculous house. the gf was all "oh my god! look at this house!?! (rewinds the tv) look at it! who needs that?" i stopped and looked at her. "you paid for that house! you did, by sitting here and being like 'oh my god look at her shoes!' 'oh my god look at her dress!' now shit has escalated because you and all the other silly bitties have watched it and she can afford that damn house."
so is kim kardashian 5 foot tall? i have never seen her next to anyone from that prospective. she has heels on and the other girls still seem like giants next to her. i never would have guessed she was short.
5'3". google for the win! i guess i'm pretty current with pop culture, having three teenagers. although i misspoke the other day when taking my daughter to college and said "let's do a selfie". apparently it's "take". didn't realize words weren't interchangeable. at the vma's when ed sheeran won an award and walked by miley cyrus, she called him an asshole. this is the video they are using as proof: i'm not seeing it. but then again, i don't really care. and have you guys heard? miley is retiring from twerking! yay! or boo! depending on how you feel about it.
i'm pretty sure that's slang for masturbation. focus: i'm out of touch with popular culture. i don't listen to the popular radio stations, don't watch popular shows, fuck it, who has the damn time to keep up? if not knowing what the fuck an iggy azalea is means that i'm a tax-paying intelligent member of society, i'd call it a solid trade on my part. my ignorance is bliss, bitches.