The sixth season of Top Chef is now six episodes in, which means most of the obviously shit chefs are gone and the ones that may actually have a shot at winning the thing are becoming clear. Top Chef as a show is rarely boring, especially if you're into food, but the last couple seasons have been lacking in competitive suspense. Season 6, thankfully, doesn't have that problem. A lot of writing about Top Chef (and hell, the judges on the show encourage it) try to make objective judgments about the talent of one season compared to another. That's bullshit and pointless: First, the challenges are different each season; second, judging is essentially comparative in nature anyway (a lackluster dish will still win a challenge if the other dishes are lousy); and most importantly, WE CAN'T TASTE THE FUCKING FOOD. The judges, especially in the first episode of each season, tend to make those kinds of statements: "Wow, we're in for a real treat this season! This is the most talented crop of chefs yet!" Maybe they can tell, since they're, you know, eating the food, but we aren't and we can't.
The only way of judging seasons against each other is by judging the competitiveness of the field of contestants. Every season's cast consists of three types of chefs. One-half are shitty chefs who are going to be sent packing as soon as they send out that one explosively, horrifically, inevitably disastrous dish. One-quarter are chefs who are talented and may well win a challenge or two but are not, barring some kind of epic screwup from a favorite, going to make it into the finals. And the last quarter, the ones that really decide whether a season is great or just entertaining, is the chefs that could actually win.
In a great season, you'll have a solid handful of chefs that could win. Season 1 had Harold, Tiffani, Lee Ann, and Steven, with Dave as an outlier from that "talented but unlikely" group. Season 2 had Ilan, Sam, Cliff, and Elia, with Marcel as a borderline from the "talented but unlikely" who took Cliff's place in the finals after Cliff (rightfully) put that annoying fucker in a headlock and tried to shave his head, and was sent home for his philanthropic anti-Marcel efforts. Then the show, in this view, starts going downhill. Season 3 was the worst; while Hung is probably the most dominant competitor in Top Chef history, he had zero competition, coasting through for an easy, obvious, and boring win. Season 4 was a little better, with Richard, Stephanie, and Dale all conceivable winners, but Season 5 went right back to that lack of competitiveness. Stefan won half of the entire season's challenges, an absolutely insane winning streak, and though he was somehow beaten by Hosea in the finals, his season had zero suspense.
That's all pretty fucking boring if you're not a diehard fan of the show like I am, I'm sure. So let's get into the current season, which is awesome so far.
This season has a whopping five contestants who could actually win. That's fucking great, or at least it will be once we clear out the chaff (and by chaff I mean Robin). Kevin, my pick for the eventual winner, has the calm demeanor and distinctive style that's made for a winning chef in the past, but Jennifer (whose ugly-ass South Philly accent brings tears to my eye. Tears of pain, not nostalgia, but still), the comically divergent Voltaggio brothers (one of them is straight-laced and conservative! One has tattoos and is into molecular gastronomy! It's a fucking sitcom!), and kind of unfortunately, Mike Isabella (whose frequent misogynistic and borderline-racist comments are only matched in annoyance by his attempts to be known for wacky nicknames, but who is regrettably talented) all have a shot at winning.
The season has already been pretty interesting; two chefs have gone home sooner than expected (Hector the Puertoriqueno and Mattin the mincing, scarf-wearing Basque--Top Chef does not like foreigners) and the five frontrunners have been trading wins fairly evenly. Unfortunately Toby Young, Master of the Forced, Unfunny and Uninformed Food Zinger, recently made an appearance (you might remember him from last season, saying things like "This fennel has a real anise taste to it!") but otherwise I'm really excited about it. Top Chef is one of the best shows, period, on television right now, and we're in the middle of what's sure to be one of its best seasons. If you're not watching, you should be.
Lil Wayne has achieved unbelievable success in a few short years. He came to prominence around 2004-2005 through his membership in the Cash Money crew (which also includes Juvenile (Ha!) and Birdman) and exploded with the release of Tha Carter III in 2008. Aside from racking up record-breaking sales (over a million albums sold in its first week), Tha Carter III was nominated for a whopping eight Grammys, winning four. He's a rare beast in the mainstream hip-hop world: a hugely popular artist who is also critically acclaimed.
Yet a close examination of his work reveals an artist who is functionally illiterate and (I say this with all due respect) probably retarded. His flow is sloppy and simplistic, his beats monotonous and repetitive and his lyrics nonsensical, contradictory, and vaguely offensive. I posit that Lil Wayne is neither a talented rapper nor a pile of musical garbage, but a brilliant and far-reaching pop-culture hoax in the vein of Ern Malley.
Ern Malley was a literary hoax perpetrated in Australia in the mid-1940s. Two Australian poets, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, were behind the hoax, irritated with pretentious modernist poetry that seemed to be more concerned with masking meaning than with having any meaning in the first place. To shame the editor of a local modernist poetry magazine, the two poets created a fictitious life story of a man named Ern Malley, and wrote, in a single afternoon, 17 poems constructed exclusively of nonsense. The poems were made up of random quotations from Shakespeare, the dictionary and a few phrase books, strung together with no care at all for meaning. The words were chosen for their ominous intonation and for the end product's total impenetrability. In their words:
We opened books at random, choosing a word or phrase haphazardly. We made lists of these and wove them in nonsensical sentences. We misquoted and made false allusions. We deliberately perpetrated bad verse, and selected awkward rhymes from a Ripman's Rhyming Dictionary.
The hoax worked, briefly. Their target did indeed excitedly publish the supposed Ern Malley masterwork, "The Darkening Ecliptic," in his next issue, but once the story got out, some legitimate poetry critics began to suspect a fake. The editor was humiliated, his magazine folded, shitty avant-garde bullshit poetry suffered a severe setback, and McAuley and Stewart went on to successful careers.
I suspect that Lil Wayne is a similar experiment to the Ern Malley hoax, only even more successful in that everybody, even rap aficionados, seem to think he's great. The thing is, he's really, really not. His singles are a pastiche of modern hip-hop tropes slapped together without thought for the end product; his songs are decidedly less than the sum of their parts. Ern Malley's poetry was gibberish start to finish, but Lil Wayne's is not--there are glimmers of comprehension and several lyrical phrases that very nearly make sense. This is because Ern Malley was mocking modernist poetry, which was concerned with obscuring meaning, while Lil Wayne targets modern mainstream hip-hop, a very different beast. In analyzing both the cohesive and nonsensical aspects of Lil Wayne, we can get a clear view into the work that went into this remarkable hoax.
Note: the evidence that follows is based on Lil Wayne's singles. I've heard that his singles are not representative of his body of work, which I choose to ignore. I mostly don't believe that an album could be good while several (not one or two, like I've examined here, but all) singles suck so thoroughly and determinedly.
"A Milli"
Let's go through Lil Wayne single by single. First up is "A Milli," which won a Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance, was ranked the #1 best song of 2008 by Blender (Blender has since folded, so suck on that), and peaked at #6 on the Billboard charts. Those are some serious accolades for what's either the worst rap song ever "written" or an elaborate hoax.
I believe that "A Milli" is a thoughtful and insightful jab at the current state of rap music. Today's mainstream hip-hop abandons the social awareness of Grandmaster Flash, the revolutionary underpinnings of Public Enemy and the intelligent and literate jazz-rap of A Tribe Called Quest, instead opting for lazy, simplistic beats, dull 4/4 metered rhymes without any lyrical dexterity, and shallow, witless vulgarity. There are of course exceptions, but in a hip-hop arena dominated by 50 Cent and Kanye West, the lowest common denominator reigns.
"A Milli" takes the soulless flow of 50 Cent and mashes it with the barren beats of crunk, but it's the layer of total absurdity Lil Wayne adds that elevates the hoax to epic stature. His rhymes don't even come close to rhyming--he rhymes "Mike Lowry" with "lawn mower"--and his flow stays to a strict regular eighth-note rhythm without any variation. The best line in the song:
I'm a venereal disease like a menstrual bleed.
Let's examine this closely; god knows it warrants it. First, it doesn't rhyme. Second, it seems as if Wayne either doesn't know what a "menstrual bleed" is, or in some vaguely misogynistic way he views menstruation as a disease. This echoes the dumb sexism of 50 Cent while making no sense if taken by itself. Further evidence of Wayne's artful lack of lyrical substance:
Man I hate a shy chick Don't you hate a shy chick I had a plate of shy chick and she ain't shy no mo' She changed her name to my chick Hahaha, yea boy that's my girl And she pops excellent up in Wayne's World Totally dude you should See their faces when they see that This robot can move
This one, frankly, is too esoteric for me. I see the reference to a nostalgic pop culture icon (Wayne's World), appropriated without particular care for what that reference may mean in the context of the narrative. The preceding phrase is possibly sexual ("pops excellent up") but it's not specific enough to refer to a particular act, at least not one with which I'm familiar. Beyond that, I think it's mostly gibberish. "I had a plate of shy chick"? If anyone can figure that one out, let me know, but I maintain that it's a sophisticated avant-garde statement.
My criteria compared to your career just isn't fair/ Threw the pencil and leak on the sheet of the tablet in my mind.
This is another really nice bit of nonsensical absurdity. That latter line, the reference to writing (although I'm doubtful the persona Wayne presents would ever write anything) is in turn a reference to the "artist as god" concept Kanye West so often espouses. Except Lil Wayne turns the idea on its head by making it make absolutely no sense. He sort of gets that he's supposed to know how to write, but that's as far as the impulse goes.
Musically, "A Milli" is possibly the most irritating fucking song of the last decade. The title of the song is repeated on every single beat of the song's intro and chorus and the beat itself is little more than a few handclaps and snare drum hits scattered sparsely throughout. Lil Wayne's flow is stuttering, hoarse, vocally obscure and exhibits absolutely no rhythmic ingenuity. Such a simultaneously boring and annoying song must have some kind of unforseen depth to be so successful--and I think the dullness and staggering awfulness of "A Milli" must be an elaborate and vicious statement on the state of modern mainstream hip-hop that took off unexpectedly as a huge hit.
That an insightful and incisive satirical dig on a cultural touchstone would become massively successful and actually turn into what it originally parodied is not as uncommon as you'd think. Sketch comedy group The State, for example, were once instructed by network executives to create a character with a memorable catchphrase--an idea totally contrary to the ethos of the group. They came up with a catchphrase that's little more than a thinly-veiled 'fuck you' to the whole idea of catchphrases: a shouted "I'M GONNA DIP MY BALLS IN IT!" But this catchphrase actually took off, and the State was forced to revisit it in several later sketches. Similarly, "A Milli" could at once be a brilliant satire and a stellar example of the subject it satires.
"Lollipop"
Let's now look at Lil Wayne's first single from Tha Carter III, "Lollipop." "Lollipop" spent five weeks atop Billboard's top singles chart and won the Grammy for Best Rap Song. As brilliant and far-reaching as the Lil Wayne hoax goes, "Lollipop" is perhaps the least inspired single on the album. It's pretty much a retread of the boneheaded hypersexualized single entendre rap song used by 50 Cent is his absolutely abysmal single "Candy Shop." Whereas "A Milli" is an avant-garde absurdist masterpiece, "Lollipop" is far too accessible. Here, I'll spoil the song for you: the lollipop is his cock.
Still, there are some intriguing subtleties to "Lollipop." Early in the song, Lil Wayne pronounces the word "here" as "hurr," a staple of dirty southern rap that's mostly used to create inexact rhymes between words that wouldn't normally rhyme, such as "there" ("thurr") with "girl." It's an overused cliche at this point, to the point where it's used by those for whom the peculiar pronunciation is obviously not natural. Case in point: The Ferg uses it in her bizarre spoken-word song "London Bridge," despite being a suburban white girl and former bubblegum pop singer. Lil Wayne uses "hurr" very prominently in the middle of a line, and we know it's a contrivance because he later pronounces the word in the more common way. Yet why bother stressing an unusual word if it's not for a rhyme?
However, I love the way "Lollipop" uses onomatopoetics and nonsense words. This probably hearkens back to jazz scatting, but rap has definitely embraced silly noises and turned them anthemic (Juvenile's own "Ha" would be a good example, but the Ying Yang Twins are also masters of the technique). Lil Wayne inserts a couplet into "Lollipop" that seeks to describe the motion of an lady's ass in non-verbal grunts:
Told her to back it up like erp erp/ And make that ass jump like shczerp shczerp
Of course, "shczerp shczerp" is not the kind of sound a woman's ass would (or could) make, but neither does it have any particular meaning beyond a silly noise. Whereas in Master P's classic "Make 'Em Say UHHHH!", at least you could assume the "UHHHH!" might mean a satisfied climactic moan or some other less savory noise. But "shczerp shczerp" is resolutely devoid of meaning. It's difficult to create the illusion that something so completely claptraptic is worth listening to, but Lil Wayne has made that leap.
Lil Wayne is an enigma. How can a man who writes a line like "And he who don't believe me I'll make dessert of him/ Sherbet him, I mean" be at all serious? I think the evidence speaks for itself: either he's the world's worst rapper, or he's the Ern Malley of the 21st century.
So about a year ago, instead of studying for finals, I created a little side project called Stuff That's Lame About England, partly because Stuff White People Like was all the rage (trivia: the creator of Stuff White People Like and I attended the same school. Bet you didn't know McGill was such a hotbed of internet talent) and partly because sometimes, I really feel bad for England. It just seems like the kind of place where everybody's sad all the time, you know what I mean? Like it rains a lot, the food sucks, and they used to have such a sweet empire but now everyone hates them just because they ruined several continents forever. But, being me, I lost interest with Stuff That's Lame About England after a few weeks, and left off at #7, a limp jab at music criticism's favorite punching bag, Coldplay.
After going back and reading through the posts for old times' sake, I realized that some unfortunate Brits had stumbled upon my xenophobic, cluelessly offensive attack on a country I've never visited, and for some reason seemed a little irked about it. My favorite comment is this diatribe from a commenter with the oddly misspelled handle "cash_regester" in response to Mollie's hilarious smackdown on British food.
Mate, I'm sorry, but have you tried American chocolate? It's crap is it not? Oh yeah, and what's that about blood pudding being a popular dish? I've never eaten one, and I've never seen anyone else eat one, in fact i don't even know where you can buy them! So it's not really that famous to be honest. But, putting all that aside. What food is America famous for, apart from slopburgers, sorry, hamburgers? Oh yeah, and what was it that one famous American said? "If you're going to America, bring your own food." But according to an American mate of mine, who incidentally prefers English grub to American food, you basically just add mustard and tomato sauce (sorry, American sauce) to anything to give it flavour, oh, and apparently Tabasco sauce is supposed to obliterate the taste of most things too. When all's said and done you can carry on eating that over-flavoured, dripping-in-grease American junk that you guys love so much, and we'll be happy eating proper bacon, eggs from the fridge, cottage pie (without Tabasco sauce), fish and chips (real chips that is, not crisps), and chocolate that doesn't taste like it's been through the wash 14 times.
Wow! First, I love that in this guy's crazed British mind, tomato sauce is somehow known as "American sauce," because I guess he's never heard of Italy, France, or Spain. But I particularly love his ruthless attacks on the well-known American reliance on Tabasco sauce to flavor every meal. After all, we can barely choke down our "slopburgers" (motherfucking ZING) without a thorough dousing of Tabasco sauce. And there are parts of the rant I just don't understand, like how Brits eat "eggs from the fridge." Where else would you keep eggs? Do Americans not eat eggs? Is that some kind of overseas stereotype I've never seen before? "Oh, look at the fucking American, I bet he keeps his eggs in a cabinet."
This comment is like a bizarro version of Stuff That's Lame About England. It too consists of baseless and, frankly, factually incorrect stabs at a foreign country, but it's also totally unaware that Stuff That's Lame About England was at least 10% self-mocking. Well, maybe 5%.
In response to my post about England's penchant for ridiculous-sounding place names, commenter Gibby (sounds British, doesn't it? Gibby watches telly while eating jellies! Ha ha ha!) wrote:
This is the Stupides page. You are making fun of the names of cities. Because Guess what I think you're STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And so I officially submit number 8 on the list of Stuff That's Lame About England: British Blog Commenters.
While watching Parks and Recreation on Hulu this morning (I'm concerned that it's only that terrific theme song that keeps me watching, but that's a thought for another time), I was introduced to my new favorite ad campaign, from DoSomething.org. Usually I use the 30 second breaks in Hulu episodes to fully exhaust my interest in news not about the President's preference in condiments, but this ad was something special.
It was a carbon-copy of a parody featured two years earlier in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Only for real. Here's the music video for "We've Got to Do Something," from what I've decided is my favorite Apatow movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Even without the added meta-ridiculousness of the DoSomething.org campaign, it's an amazing video, perfectly encapsulating the bullshit vague faux-activism of pompous rock stars.
"We've Got to Do Something" might well be a take on DoSomething.org; thanks to my exhaustive research (skimming a Wikipedia page), I found out that Do Something was actually founded in 1993 by some actor from Melrose Place and his buddy, both from New Jersey. Here's their mission statement or whatever:
The New Jersey natives had a dream: what if making a difference in a community became just as cool and important and second nature to teens as athletics or other activities? Kids would develop not only their minds and bodies, but their souls, too.
That's already pretty funny, but as it turns out, every dumb self-aggrandizing bit of activism can be made even funnier with the addition of the Jonas brothers. Here's the ad I saw.
I don't really give a shit if the emo-haired "Worst Actor on Gossip Girl Award" winner (it's a competitive category) or the not-so-surprisingly gay-voiced Jonas brothers throw in their lot with this nonsense, but what is Veronica Mars Kristin Bell doing there? She STARRED in Forgetting Sarah Marshall! Come on, Veronica. I know you can connect the dots.
No crass "teabagging" joke shall be made here at Oh Em Gee, where maturity and journalistic integrity are valued so highly. Instead, we shall present these photos without comment.
Pennsylvania occupies a weird spot in the country, geographically. Its eastern section, including Philadelphia, lies firmly in the Northeast, bordering New York and New Jersey; its southern border to the east borders Delaware and Maryland, putting it in the Mid-Atlantic region; its western side, including Pittsburgh, sits next to Ohio, placing it in the Rust Belt section of the Midwest; and the western two-thirds of its southern border is shared with West Virginia, which means we're talking Appalachia. James Carville once famously described the state as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle," and Pennsylvanians routinely refer to the part of the state in between the cities as "Pensyltucky."
During the presidential election, a canvasser somewhere in central Pennsylvania encountered what's maybe the best example of this state's political leanings I've ever seen. An imposing, burly sort of dude answered the canvasser's knock, and upon being asked who he planned to vote for, stopped and thought for a second. Then he yelled back into the house, "HONEY! WHO WE VOTIN' FOR?" From somewhere behind him, the reply came back. "WE'RE VOTIN' FOR THE NIGGER!" The dude turned to the canvasser and calmly answered, "Right. We're votin' for the nigger."
So I get it. My home state has a bit of an identity crisis. But there's no excuse for this fucking bullshit.
That's a OFFICIAL PENNSYLVANIA PRO-LIFE LICENSE PLATE. The state profits from this shit! This isn't like some pro-life group made a license plate holder and sold it to their members. Pennsylvania is implicitly offering approval of one side of an incredibly divisive issue by selling their slogan (and thoughtfully diverse drawing) on state property. Even if the sides were switched and the state only offered a pro-choice plate, I'd be exactly as offended: Pennsylvania has no right to support a private and controversial political, religious, and/or moral position through official means.
The state also offers plates extolling local firefighter precincts, Pennsylvania colleges and universities, and oddball stuff like the "Ancient Order of the Hibernians of America" that might be offensive, if I had any idea what the fuck it meant. But it's shocking and embarrassing to see one side of an issue as explosive as abortion get the stamp of approval from the state government. I wonder if I can get an official "Fuck Pennsylvania" Pennsylvania license plate.
Curt gut reactions. Sometimes better than wordiness. In no particular order. No accompanying picture. Couldn't think of one. Whatever.
Malajube, "Labyrinthes" Still French, still awesome. Not an easy combination, so extra kudos.
K'naan, "Troubadour" Disappointing, over-produced, features a mysterious and recurring faux-Caribbean accent (he's Somalian and Canadian; neither is in the Caribbean, I'm pretty sure). New version of "If Rap Gets Jealous" especially garbagey. DOOM, "Born Like This" Lost the MF prefix, but still a gloriously arhythmic weirdo.
Wavvves, "Wavvves" Tough to tell through the wall of distortion, but may feature instruments and/or vocals. Not sure though. Sucks either way.
The Thermals, "Now We Can See" (Sloppily) imitating Weezer fifteen years after everyone else stopped. Lame or "retro"?
Metric, "Fantasies" Metric: persistently moody and boring since "Old World Underground." No change here.
1990s, "Kicks" Might be a long-lost Cars album with misleading packaging. Not a bad idea, really.
K-Os, "Yes" Curiously lifeless and stale. Just noticed he sounds like will.i.am. Definitely doesn't help.
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, "Fruit" Would've been better if all ten tracks were "Around the Bend."
Beirut, "Holland EP" Sort of simplistic take on The Postal Service-esque electronicapop. Not bad, but not especially noteworthy either.
Beirut, "March of the Zapotec EP" Subtitle: "Beirut Goes to Mexico!" Still sounds Slavic, somehow.
Andrew Bird, "Noble Beast" Absolutely refuses to write a simple fucking pop song, despite obvious inclination. Evidence: "Fitz and the Dizzyspells," "Plasticities" (latter from previous album). Full of irritating flourishes. More annoying: doesn't suck.
Andrew W.K., "The Japan Covers" Hilarious, as always. Not as good as "I Get Wet," also as always. Sample lyric: "You are beautiful, just like a rat/ And I will catch you like a cat."
Animal Collective, "Merriweather Post Pavilion" Still awful, atmospheric noise gibberish. Album name as retarded as the music within.
The Decemberists, "The Hazards of Love" Still hyperliterate and very solid songwriters. But continues trend of decreasing freshness since "Her Majesty." Band badly in need of a shakeup.
