Smashing through that glass ceiling of gender inequity…one “amazing female urinary device” at a time.  Freedom!

http://www.femalefreedom.ca/default.htm

“God?  It’s me, Canada.  Please send help.”

As you know, there are just two things I really cherish in this world:

1) Implied cultural street-cred from listening to rap music; and

2) Radiohead.

So imagine my glee this week to have been introduced to DJ Minty Fresh Beats’s Jaydiohead.  Have a listen here.

That’s right…Jay-Z + Radiohead = I just blacked out (again).

The album’s high points?  Definitely “Dirt Off Your Android” and the mash-up of little-known Radiohead b-side “Gagging Order” with Jay-Z’s “Never Change” in “Change Order”.

A low point?  Nothing musically – it really is a great album.  But I have to say, the title could have used a little more…[ahem] minty freshness.  While, sure, it does what The Grey Album title did in terms of succinctly communicating the mash-up (and working well phonetically), I just feel like there was a missed opportunity with all the weirdness floating around Jay-Z and Radiohead album titles.

We could have seen:

OK Dynasty: Roc La Bends

Vol. 3…Life and Times of Pablo Honey

An American Gangster in Rainbows

Hail to the Hard Knock Life

Or, the one that has my vote:

F-ck You, Musical Establishment…Vol. 1 “I’m retired”…Vol. 2 “Just kidding”…Vol. 3. “We’re releasing ‘In Rainbows’ for free”

Next week, I’ll review another forthcoming mash-up:  Ja Rule vs. My Chemical Romance in…Thug Guyliner.

p.s.  What’s my favorite mash-up ever?  I thought you’d never ask.  So about a year ago I’m in Zouk (#1 club in Singapore and, I would argue, in the Global Top 3…Joy Eslava in Madrid, and “My Basement the Year ‘MTV Party to Go Volume 5’ Came Out” being the other two) and I hear Snoop’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” mashed up with…wait for it…“Wonderwall”.  It was, in a word…badonkadonk.

I’m a white boy from a small town on the coast of Maine.  My parents are teachers.  I play the violin.  I enjoy waxing poetic about medieval history and Ralph Vaughn Williams.  My athletic achievements include being able to run for relatively long distances without tripping, and occasionally looking decent in tennis whites.  All to say, I’m about the furthest constellation away from “Thug Life” that you can imagine.

And yet…

…Tony Scott’s awesome review today of the upcoming biopic “Notorious” struck a deep chord with me – one that I almost forgot existed.

Because, you see, I grew up with The Notorious B.I.G.

No, not dealing crack on the mean streets of Brooklyn.  But sitting shotgun in my friend Splang’s ’94 Mitsubishi Eclipse (“The ‘Bish”), careening through Southern Maine to the backdrop of Ready to Die and Life After Death.

Lame?  A little.  Typical?  Maybe.  But Authentic?  Absolutely.

Granted, yes – rap and hip-hop mean something completely different to someone who grew up in a tough neighborhood in New York City or L.A. (sorry, Nelly – St. Louis doesn’t make the cut), and I’m sure that plenty of people who listen to the same music hear things that I don’t hear, and know things that I don’t know.  But B.I.G. did something amazing for me, at least – he took a white kid out of suburban New England and gave him a crash-course education in 1990s urban America.  In Splang’s own words, “Perhaps we didn’t dress the part, but we were B.I.G.’s vessel to a stiff-collared town of John Denver circle jerks.”  Truth.  I love B.I.G.  I love his songs, I love his rhymes.  And I’m continually amazed that he did more musically in 24 short years than many other artists accomplish in an entire career.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Just another white kid trying to seem cooler than other white people – thinks he connects to black people and urban black culture because he memorized some hip-hop lyrics when he was 16 that he can’t begin to understand.”  But I’m not suggesting I’m cooler than anyone else.  I’m not saying that I know the first thing about making it in Harlem in 1997, nor do I presume to think that I will ever understand exactly what it feels like to be a black person in America.

So why do I care?  Because B.I.G. (and Puffy, to an extent, before he became annoying) spoke to modern America – Black, White, Latin, Asian, urban, suburban, whoever, whatever.  Again, did I exactly get where B.I.G. was coming from all the time?  No.  But that doesn’t mean his rhymes don’t mean anything to me, and to millions of other people of our generation.  And I think that’s worth celebrating.

I live in London now.  I was in a club here a few weeks ago, with the usual mix of Brits, Euros, and other assorted international hooligans.  We Americans abroad take a lot less heat after November 4, 2008 than we used to, but plenty about who we are/how we roll still draws the occasional smirk or snort.  “Hypnotize” from Biggie’s Life After Death came on.  I had had a few chardonnays…and it bothered me that the dance floor wasn’t giving this song enough credit (i.e. people weren’t dancing well enough).  So I broke into the middle, made myself a little circle, and started rap-dancing (basically just rapping along to the music while flailing my arms with vague coordination) to honor Biggie Smalls.  And to my infinite joy, I was shortly joined by an African-American dude from Philly, a Chinese-American guy from San Francisco, and an Indian-American girl from Chicago (strangers at first – we only introduced ourselves when the song was done).  We shouted the lyrics over the speakers, gyrated around with huge matching grins on our faces, and probably horrified more than a few of the Oxbridge types.  Someone later asked rhetorically, “Wow, what are the chances [that such racially diverse Americans, randomly in the same club in London, would all know the lyrics to this hip-hop song]?”  And after a moment’s pause I responded, “You know, actually, the chances are probably pretty good.” 

Because I realized that we four were the exact types of people who put Barack Obama in the White House, and the same types who will scream ourselves hoarse with glee on January 20.  We’re the ones who make the idea of “post-racial America” a reality and not a punchline.  We’re the ones peeved at these weak MCs, but still throwing our rollies in the sky.

Thanks, B.I.G.

Yes.

For confused association, if nothing else.

Because you know some unfortunate sap is definitely going to take his girlfriend to see Bride Wars thinking it’s Rachel Getting Married, and afterwards he’ll be sitting in a Romano’s Macaroni Grill*, unable to focus on his tasty (but predictable) entrée because he’ll have been searching too hard for the “marquee acting” that…just…wasn’t…there.

“I mean, I guess that tackle of Kate Hudson was pretty good…but, like, SAG-good.  MAYBE Golden Globe-good.  Definitely not Oscar-good.”

And where am I through all this?

I’m at home on-demanding Muriel’s Wedding…because THAT’S HOW MUCH YOU’VE F-CKED ME UP WITH ALL THIS, ANNE.

Thanks.

p.s.  There’s  a Raffaello Follieri / Cheating the Vatican / “The Institution of Marriage is Dying” joke in here…but I just can’t see it.

*If (when?) I ever settle in suburban America I would be perfectly, 100% content to go to a Movie and the Macaroni Grill every Friday night for the rest of my life, I sh!t you not.  Come on, you would too.

I flew into Boston from London last week.  It was a nice flight, despite losing 2 hours of my life to “The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor”.  On arrival, I disembarked and made my way to the immigration area.  As with most international terminals these days, there are two sets of immigration booths:  1 for domestic nationals (Americans), and 1 for the international jet set.  I can’t imagine that it’s particularly pleasant to roll up to the “Foreign Nationals” window as a non-American these days, but at least one girl didn’t give a f-ck.  I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

As I was approaching the area where the Americans and the Eurotrash split up into their separate corrals, I couldn’t help but notice ahead of me the characteristic shuffle of a young lady in her early 20s walking in Ugg boots.  You know, that weird squelching that assaults both ears and eyes – the clunking gait reminiscent of how ‘90s Goths looked in their old school Doc Martens, but without the faint sound of Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People” peeking out of over-the-ear headphones connected to a black Sony Discman in the back pocket, its wires tangled with a chain wallet.  These weren’t that offensive on the Ugg-scale – pretty much your standard mid-calf tan number that we’ve seen everywhere since 2002.  Still, it was equal parts amusing and disturbing to see that The Britney Spears School of Looking Like a Scrub While Being Fabulously Wealthy continues to attract disciples in 2008. 

Because here’s the dirty secret of Uggs:  they look absurd.  Sorry, but they do.  And you know what, I’m no longer afraid to say so.  Seeing this girl in Uggs at the airport made something in me snap.  I try to look as put-together as a I can when I’m travelling (probably a subconscious finger-cross for that elusive Business Class upgrade), and especially when I’m traversing borders/going through immigration.  Not that I’ve got anything to hide, but I would just rather not unintentionally provoke some disgruntled border control agent with an axe to grind, if I can help it.  So while I’m there worried about whether or not I look enough like my passport picture because I’m wearing my glasses instead of my contact lenses, I’ve got a Real Housewife of Orange County ahead of me in Uggs making me look stupid by proximity.

So that’s why I feel compelled to say:  Ladies, you’ve brow-beaten the men in your lives long enough – I will not go through another winter pretending that Uggs are an acceptable form of fashion. 

In defense of my own sense of decency, and for all the men out there who have been afraid to say something until now, I’m offering some retorts to the classic arguments for Uggs: 

“Surfers in Australia wear Uggs.” 

False.  Surfers in Australia have sex with chicks.  They don’t wear chick shoes. 

“It doesn’t matter how they look, they’re just really comfortable.”

Well, hell, I’d love to walk around in my old Tevas, but it’s not 1992, sweetheart. 

“Women dress for other women – it doesn’t matter what you think.”

Apparently.  Because no guy finds the velour-Juicy-Couture-jumpsuit-tucked-into-calf-high-Uggs thing attractive.  Trust me. 

Anyway, so back in the airport, this girl is continuing her encumbered slide towards immigration, and I’m shaking my head with a sarcastic “There’s no place like home” thought, chalking this up to yet another way that Americans embarrass themselves (and me) no matter where they go.  But then, out of nowhere, my world is rocked.  Instead of peeling off left with me towards the American line, Jessica Simpson continues on straight to the Foreign Nationals mayhem.  And then I see in her hand the unmistakable crimson of a United Kingdom passport…and I become momentarily overcome with glee.  Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the British while living among them, it’s that while they may sound a hell of a lot smarter than us…deep down they’re really just as ridiculous as we are.  (Exhibits A-F:  Haggis, Crumpets, Mel B, Mel C, Ascots, This Girl.) 

Not as ridiculous as Uggs, though.