Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Lance Armstrong, the Trouble with O, and a Challenge to the Music Industry: Tonight, on a very special Punky Brewster

--  Am I the only one left in the world who just doesn't give a flying fuck about this Lance Armstrong thing?  Like really, am I?  Because I am starting to feel like I am.  You all know me and how I love a good Hollywood type scandal.  Even if I don't even know the people, or what exactly is going on, I usually eat that shit up.  This one?  I could care less. I always tried to care about his story, really I did.  Back when I was in grad school, my interest was "pathography", which basically is another word for illness memoirs.  Anyway, in my thesis, I actually was able to throw in a quote from Gilda Radner's memoir, and Michael J. Fox's bio, and since everyone and their fucking dog at that time was ooohing and ahhhing about Lance Armstrong's book, I thought I could throw that into the old Works Cited page too!  Well, fuck me Dorothy, but I just couldn't read the damn thing.  I really wanted to - it was current and he was all over the media and since I love my balls and he only had one, I wanted to feel happy for this triumphant story.  But it was boring.  And he just seemed arrogant.  Actually, I think my words were that he was "an arrogant fuck."  Then fast forward a bit, and Sheryl Crow is on Oprah with him and is pretty much jumping on the couch a la Mr. Magoo-Cruise over this dude, and all I can think of is "really?  Him?"  I mean, she was like this teenaged girl, and he was just this... dud.  It was like the usual high school football player and the starstruck girl he's dating just to fuck, until he tires of her and breaks her heart and runs off with some slut named Donna-do-you-wanna while she cries on the shoulder of the guy friend she confides in, who is sort of dorky and not a jock and wears a Swatch watch and who loves this girl and tries to steal sniffs of her hair as she puts her head on his shoulder to cry, and you know she's always going to pine over this asshole woman-hater and the poor boy who really loves her will end up just crying into a bottle of whiskey every weekend at some random bonfire or other.  The usual story.

Anyway, thus it was no surprise when Lance dumped her sorry ass for someone else.  But anyway, he really dropped of the radar until now.  And while I have to say I didn't like his book and didn't like his dating practices, and didn't like, actually, bike racing.  WHO THE FUCK CARES?!  I am sorry to all the bike racers reading this, but I could care less about bike racing.  Why the fuck do you want to wear those fucked up sorts that you have to peel off?  I tried a pair on once in the 80s - I think part of them are STILL on my legs.  And why do you want to sit on such an awful seat?  And really, if you want to drive across France, take a fucking tour bus!  Anyway, I jest, sort of, but I don't get why this is such a big deal sport to get your knickers in a knot about.  So even though Big O snaps the biggie, I couldn't care less.  So fucking what if he doped and got away with it?  I don't give a shit.  What the fuck ever.  And all those people with their yellow bracelets they wear?  I never, ever understood that shit.  Livestrong.  I dont understand what that means.  I admit it here now - I never understood what that symbolized.  I had a bunch of students wear then throughout the years and I always wondered, is this in solidarity with ball cancer?  But then after seeing so many people with them, I just couldn't believe THAT many people were personally affected with ball cancer (and I am not making light of ball cancer - I know it's horrible).  So then I thought maybe it had something to do with bike racing, but again, too many dudes without shaved legs were wearing them, so I knew it wasn't that either.  I have come to realize that the Livestrong website has been very good as I've googled my many hypochondriacial illnesses the past few years, but yet again, I still don't quite get the bracelet.  But what the fuck ever.  The point is, those bracelets will be a thing of the past I guess, and I still have no clue what they meant - ball cancer survivors, bike riders, an expression of a personal relationship with Rastafarian music - who the hell knows?  Anyway, it will be gone. And I bear Lance Armstrong no anger or ill will or anything.  I hope he weathers this well actually, because people are going to be belly-aching about how they want money back for buying his book and shit.  Whiners.  Grow up.  People do shit they shouldn't.  Forgive them.  Stop being so judgey peoples!  If someone offered YOU a bag of oxygenated blood to transfuse in a tent, tell me you wouldn't have a hard time saying no?

Sheryl Crow sure has picked some stinkers to roll around in the sack with, hey?  Eric Clapton, who, while he may be her guitar god, is like old enough to be her frigging DADDY.  Indeed he was your favorite mistake.  And Kid Rock?!  I've had bowel movements more attractive than that guy.  Dude was married to someone with HEP C - isn't that enough to freak the everloving shit out of you?  Wait, wasn't he married to Pam? Anyway, whatever.  And then Lance.  Honey, you might as well pick Lance Bass next, it'll go as per your usual.

And do you think this interview will make people flock to O, the Network? NO, it won't!  You know what, Oprah?  Dumb it down a bit.  Get rid of that shit with that Ilyalla woman or whatever - that self help woman.  It's no damn good.  And Lisa Ling?  She's no Connie Chung. And we don't want to see Oprah's greatest moments - we want to see reruns from day one, with fat Oprah and skinny Oprah and the good, bad, and ugly.  Let us see the whole thing from the start, warts and all.  And buy the rights to show reruns of Donohue.  THAT will bring in the viewers.  Lighten the fuck up, GIRLFRIEND.


In light of all of this Lance business, I am proposing that the RRIA announce a no doping policy for the RIAA (or the RRIA or whatever the recording industry acronym is).  Yes, I think they should play hardball with those motherfuckers who are doping when they write and/or record.  I mean, imagine how hurt and crushed America's youth would be if they knew their favorite artists performed under enhancing agents?  Like, do you think Pink Floyd could have recorded their body of work without drugs?  No fucking way, I say.  Take away the drugs, and Dark Side of the Moon would be nothing more that an ''NSynch album.  Supertramp's "Fool's Overture?"  It would come out sounding like Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.  How unfair these releases were to acts like the Starland Vocal Band and Pablo Cruise.  Imagine if they had high grade hallucinogenics at their disposal?  It would all sound very different.  So yes, I am going to crusade so that the recording industry is no longer infected by drugs.  Just say no!  One Toke Over the Line, Sweet Jesus?  Not on my watch, buddy. Take your MaryJane and beat it.  My dear, sweet, beloved Joni Mitchell is not free and clear.  One of my now favorite songs of hers is this song called "Sweet Bird", from 1975.  It's just haunting to me.  But the lyrics? Intense!  I am not sure how the hell she came up with the song, because who is so creative?  And there are parts where I am like "huh?" It's too deep.  The kind of deep you can only reach when you are high as a kite.  So yeah - without the dope, the frigging song would probably come out sounding like "A Tisket, and Tasket".  WTF is a tisket anyway? Or a tasket?  and why would you want a fucking ugly yellow basket?  Maybe they doped long before our time....
And the rappers rapping without the chronic?  Maybe Cypress Hill could finally get serious and rap about raising money for school lunches for the needy.

And that is the rest of the story.