Me-Mail: Ball Dropping Fun

To: Jiminyjcricket@cricketwatch.net
From: GW
Subj: Ball Dropping Fun

Jiminy,

That was quite a show you put on last night. I had a blast as did the wife and kids. You are welcome in our home any time. Also, thank you for the chocolates. They were as delicious as they were visually exquisite, just like your tight little green thorax. Keep up the good work.

Best Regards,
G. Willikers

Me-Mail: Dog Days

Tick tick peanut butter, jelly and the jam. I’ve got the moves of a travelin’ band. Take the deppy posits off the positronic tonic and let’s do this all for mustard. Bang. Rocket off to Phobos. Take the coats off of the hobos and give them sonic with brie on it, like the embryonic phonics. Sicks sense, we’re staying home from school. We’ll show that old fool the gold pool and take the monkeys off the fence. What’s up now, dude? Forget the lettuce, let’s get us some tomatoes pureed, pasted and stewed. Bang. Shots me on the burgers. Shall we discuss the habits of rabbits and footlong frankfurters?

Me-Mail: Can he swing from web?

To: jjjameson@dailyplanet.com
From: hosborn@oscorp.com
Subj: Happy Hour

Jonah,

You're an asshole. That said, you sure know how to run a newspaper. Thanks for making sure Oscorp made page one the other day. You really saved my ass with the board. Let's get together for scotch and cigars. Don't invite Spider-man, though. The last time he was over he got shit-faced and shot web fluid all over my fucking apartment. I had to buy a new couch! He said he would pay for it but I haven't seen him since. What a dick. See you tonight.

Harry

Me-Mail: Out of Light, Nothing

Dear Sirs,

You cannot overcome light. It would be as futile as trying to stop a wave from breaking on the beach. More interestingly, why would one be driven to such pursuits? Can life be that dull? No chance you’re attempting to follow through on your hollow promises to the Directorate, is there? I’m sorry. Though I’m not there with you, I can already sense I’ve touched a nerve. Yes, light is a bit of a tease, it would seem. You can manipulate it. You can create it, and from a surprisingly wide variety of materials, indeed. But you can never black it out. Not even layers upon layers of thick dust and water reaching high into the stratosphere can accomplish that. Cry havoc and let loose the tempest. When even she tires from her destruction-wreaking, light shall persist.

Cast aside this junk science. Your brilliancies and nuance are sorely needed elsewhere. May I suggest genome-engineering or nano-fuel research? If their respective workloads are too great a burden to bear, perhaps something softer on the brain would do. I hear they’re making remarkable advances in the efficiencies of photo-voltaic cells these days.

Senstor

Me Mail...SUBJ: Thanks

Austin,

Thanks for getting me those margin estimates. You’re a lifesaver. In fact, I think that I owe you much more than a simple thank you. You see, over the past couple of years, I been hiding a dirty secret. I’ve been stealing your work. Yep, it’s me. Late in the day, after you’ve gone home, I boot your computer up and just starting sending myself your spreadsheets. Then I erase the letters from your sent file and clear the server cache. I’ll change a couple of things here and there, so we don’t end up sending in identical analyses, but it’s all your work.

You’re a pretty bright guy, you know that? There have been a couple of times when I wanted to stop by your cubicle and talk to you about your ideas, but I couldn’t have given myself away like that. I was especially impressed by some of your insights on marginal producers and downward cost pressures as a result of changes in accounting procedures for depreciating assets. That was an amazing piece of analysis. I’m sorry you didn’t get credit for it. If it makes you feel any better, all of that hard work you’ve put in hasn’t really gotten me anywhere, either. Despite the fact that I’ve had a goose giving me pure gold for the past 2 years, I’ve advanced no further than anyone. I already knew I was a failure. Now I know I’m a failure that can’t even make it dishonestly.

I am going to kill myself, Austin. It’s why I’m telling you all this. I’m also going to forward this to the director. Maybe it’s too little, too late, but perhaps you can start getting some of that recognition you deserve. It’s been a pleasure working with you, mate. Let’s get a beer in the next life.

Tubbs

Weezer and the History of Man

We always knew Rivers Cuomo was smart. I mean, beyond having been born the son of a jazz musician, being granted the breadth of perspective expected of one raised in an ashram, and studying music at Berklee, he was accepted to and graduated from Harvard University ('98-'06). Sure, he left a couple of times, but it's the getting in the first time that's the trick.
Accomplishing these things takes a smart fella, or at least an esoteric one. There is no doubt that Cuomo is both.

So why call attention to these facts now? In the first week of June Weezer released a new self-titled album, this one sporting an eye-grabbing red cover. It also features Rivers in a cowboy hat and mustache (more on that in a moment), but it's the unmistakably red cover of the album that is important here.Weezer's most recent release brings the count of eponymous Weezer albums to three, each featuring on its respective cover the current iteration of Weezer set against a monochrome background. The first, released in 1994, featured an all blue cover and has since been commonly referred to as 'The Blue Album.' For the band's 2001 release, a green cover was used and hence 'The Green Album' was born. In the years following, Weezer went on to release Maladroit in 2002 followed by Make Believe in 2005. This brings us to their most recent release, the 'Red Album.'

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com does a fine, albeit brief job of discussing the album's musical and contextual merits. But he's left something essential out. Erlewine's review reiterates that famous critical axiom that eponymous albums are typically albums of purpose. This is correct to a point. I would argue that eponymous albums can be albums either of purpose or of philosophy. And what is philosophy but a basis for purpose? What Weezer has achieved with its Red Album (I’m OVER frivolous quotation marks) is the culmination of a philosophy that began all the way back in 1994 in the mind of a smart, esoteric singer/songwriter.

When asked for a list of influences, Rivers gives a diverse one. Kiss and Nirvana are named in the same breath as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Puccini. To help develop himself as a songwriter and understand the mechanics of pop and rock music, Rivers created his own 'Encyclopedia of Pop', a "three-ring binder full of notes featuring the works of Oasis, Green Day and Nirvana", three of the most popular rock groups in the U.S. during the early 1990s. This document must also have contained some of his most intimate thoughts and opinions about music. From this rock crucible came the credo that would become manifest across the band’s three color-coded, self-titled pop-rock albums; that pop rock is pop culture, and that all pop culture is constructed using a combination of three basic elements: melancholy, hubris, and homage.

Read that sentence again. It's important, and it's the first sentence I've ever written that includes both semi-colon and a full colon. It's also why the color choices for each album cover were no accident. Blue, green and red are also the three colors necessary for the display of color television, perhaps the greatest symbol for pop culture in the history of modern man.

Holy shit.

Blue, being a metaphor for melancholy, was a natural choice for an album dedicated to this rudiment of pop. Songs from Weezer's debut album, though upbeat in melody and tempo, featured lyrics describing sadness inspired by moments in life that are universal in experience. From the wistful desire for a return to days gone by to the angst that comes with being an outcast, Cuomo understands. From romantic conflicts to reflections of a life spent in fantasy, he’s been there. Cuomo captured most perfectly and sweetly the emotion of melancholy in "My Name is Jonas" and "Say it Ain't So", two of the album's most popular tracks. But he knew that the album couldn’t be all doom and gloom. Cuomo makes sure to keep a keen eye on the future, using “Surf Wax America” and “In the Garage” to foreshadow the introduction of his two remaining puzzle pieces, hubris and homage.

On the Green Album, Cuomo addresses the problem of hubris and its trappings. But far from subscribing to the chest-thumping phenomenon of the rap-metal, cock-rock movement seen in the early years of the 21st century, Cuomo took Weezer in an opposite direction by largely disavowing pride in favor of honesty and humility, especially in the context of romantic relationships, as evidenced by songs such as "Don't Let Go," "Island in the Sun" and "O, Girlfriend." That doesn't mean you shouldn't take pride in things such as your work or being true to yourself, two situations Rivers addresses on "Glorious Day" and "Hash Pipe" respectively. Cuomo is quick to point out, however, this emotion is best experienced with a healthy dose of temperance.Still, the Green Album speaks to another critical element in the crux of pop culture. At different points in nearly every song, the issue of the past is discussed. It is a second common theme of the album, and it is how Rivers sets the stage for what would be the final piece to Weezer's self-titled declaration of band philosophy, the importance of homage.

In a letter to his nemesis Robert Hooke in 1672, Isaac Newton wrote, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Newton freely acknowledged and believed that but for the work of Descartes and other philosophers and mathematicians before him, he would not have achieved a greater understanding of the physical world. It's a sentiment Rivers Cuomo must hold dear, for in his pop thesis the subject of reference is of critical importance.

The Red Album cements the importance of homage firmly in place, just as it is sure to do for Weezer's position in pop rock history. But the album does not speak just to reference as a general concept. Rather, it seeks to address reference as the sum of its principles and various contexts. Reference in the context of specific artists is addressed most notably by "Heart Songs," a summation of songs and works that have both moved and inspired the artist throughout his career and life. Interestingly, it is in this song that Weezer's ambitions are revealed. As the song draws to a close, the band suggests that it might one day, too, be the giant upon whose shoulders future rock philosophers may stand. That's a dangerous admission, considering that Weezer is forced to walk a very fine line between being critically and commercially popular and being pretentious dicks. But there is no malice here. It is clear that Weezer does not wish to dominate the tapestry but be rather a part of its weave.

The Red Album gives nods to other concepts as well. With the song "Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variation on a Shaker Hymn)", Weezer plays to the panacea of popular music over the last several centuries. "Greatest Man..." runs the gamut from Baroque-style vocal counterpoint to Romantic-era grandiosity to modern rock in 4/4 time. Never mind that this track calls to mind Queen's opus, "Bohemian Rhapsody" (yet another reference to former giants), here the band sought to pay respects to the music theory and theorists that made such an opus possible.

While the band makes great strides in paying its respects to others, what makes the Red Album stand alone as an album of reference is the respect the band pays to itself. Rivers sensed long ago that an integral part of reference and respect was deference. And while it was seemingly easy to commit to wax what his vision for Weezer was, the task of expressing his gratitude to the band for turning his vision into a reality was exponentially more difficult. So rather than write his own melody to say thank you, Rivers confers his thanks and praise in the most fitting way possible; he lets the band speak for themselves. Each member takes a turn behind the mic on this album, expressing their vision and character, thanking their heroes and congratulating each other on such tremendous success. For it has been on these shoulders that Rivers Cuomo has stood for the past fifteen years.

There is, however, one giant who has until now remained unmentioned. We first learn of his existence in "Dangerous”, during which Rivers talks about his brushes with mortality in his youth. As the track continues, Cuomo contemplates what his children might one day come to him and say as they tread perilously close to their own particular edges. And he remembers his father. Not in words, though. Frank Cuomo, the giant from whose shoulders Rivers might have seen the furthest, is never mentioned on the album. But he is remembered on it. It happens on the cover. You know, the one where Rivers is wearing a mustache? Rivers has said he is wearing that mustache to celebrate the birth of his daughter, just like his father did when he was born. If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, you cannot pay greater homage that that.

So where does Weezer go from here? With their philosophy now posted for all to see, perhaps they set forth to spread the gospel. They could also now do what most aspiring acts do first and create a self-titled album to state their purpose in this new rock order. One can only hope that either course means more Weezer albums await us in the future. Only Rivers Cuomo knows for sure, though. And even if he doesn’t, I’m pretty confident he’ll figure it out. He’s a smart guy, after all.


SOURCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_Cuomo
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/discography/index.jsp?pid=36614&aid=114659



http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/862.html



http://www.lyrics.com/album.php?artistid=1373



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weezer



http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513079

Dear...Me

There are moments in the workday during which I am truly productive and industrious. There are other times, however, when I merely need to appear productive and industrious. In those moments, I write me-mail. Me-mail are letters I write to myself when people are floating in and out of my office, or when I fear the screen of my dutiful laptop may be in view of a higher-up. Me-mail might be an absurd letter to an Italian Generallissimo or to a bug. It might be me just stringing words together to see which truly don't belong in the same sentences. It's remarkably liberating, creatively, and better still, it gives the impression that I am furiously dashing off a work-realted missive thanks to the magic of Microsoft Outlook.

Here is one such me-mail:

Wouldn’t you just know I’d be sitting here, playing out the suburban fantasy one more time…I hear the whirring and the chugging of the espresso machine in the background, mechanically ejecting hot steam into a waiting milk tin. Layered above that are the tones of an obscure jazz vocalist, one whose anonymity is enough to generate intrigue and possibly in-store album sales. Her music, if purchased at all, will be done so not for her talent, but for her obscurity. I pity the poor bastard who engages in this sort of goose chase and the afternoons they must spend in front of their cd wall wondering aloud, “Who the hell ARE these people?”

From Britney With Love

Shame on us. We should have seen it coming. Britney's flameout in 2007 will surely go down as one of the most spectacular celebrity supernovas in the history of the subject. It's nothing new, of course. Gatsby, Bobby Fischer, Robert Downey Jr,; The rich and famous have been exploding and/or imploding ever since there was such a thing as fame. Cases of famous persons with infamous personalities and quirks are well documented and are still wildly speculated about today. The madness of King George III or perhaps Catherine the Great's horse-loving apparatus, anyone? In this decade alone, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, and more recently OJ Simpson have all finally met their individual ends. But this time, though...This time something was different and yet so startlingly identifiable. We had, in fact, traveled this well-worn path before, seen the rock and pebble-lined road to tragedy as ghosts not from our personal or even national consciousness, but rather from our collective global past.

After all, can we blame her? Hollywood must admit that its success to failure ratio for child stars put into the pressure-cooker is far in the realm of the atrocious. Macaulay Culkin, Ricky Schroeder, the cast of 'Different Strokes' are all fine examples of the child-turned-star-turned-drug-addled-failure phenomenon. The streets of West Hollywood are littered with the woeful tales of the young and foolish, cautionary fables for a set more likely to appreciate the sycophantic rambling of a Dr. Phil than the quiet wisdom of Aesop. Let us never forget that the Britney we know and pity today emerged not from a pop-star cocoon at 16 but from the insidiously innocent yet fertile celebrity breeding grounds of the Mickey Mouse Club, along with others that would become her contemporaries; counterparts such as Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake, to name a pair as well as other generational stars like Keri Russell and Ryan Gosling.

But, if in fact it is true that Timberlake and Aguilera were born of the same blood and tested by the same fires that finally consumed our beloved Britney, why did she alone fall prey? Where did she foolishly rush in where pop angels feared to tread? It must be argued that her success was ultimately the architect of her failure. She had become a victim of too much too soon. And that, finally, was her great miscalculation. Where Christina succeeded on a slightly smaller scale, and Timberlake surrounded himself with a human shield of pubescent eye-candy that could bear the awesome force of America's great aggressive desire until he was strong enough to withstand it on his own, Britney forged ahead alone. She alone heeded no warnings, and when the sun finally melted away the wax that held those Ionian wings to our plaid-skirted songstress, she alone fell to Earth to her mortality. Still though, why does it all sound so damn familiar?

Mother Russia knows the tale all too well.

A child of the vision of that firebrand socioeconomic philosophy of Marx and Engels, the United Soviet Socialist Republic, too, rose to global prominence on the strength of its charisma and sheer force of will. After emerging from World War II a world superpower on par with the United States, the USSR set about consolidating, reinforcing, and in the end surrendering that great power to the twin shivas of civilizations; unsustainable largess and corrupt governance. Forces that effected the very same change in our intrepid heroine Ms. Britney Spears. So just how closely linked are our two cultural and globo-political icons? The best place to start, of course, is at the beginning.

Consider first that Marxist hotbed of activity, the Mickey Mouse Club. With eager pre-teens dressed identically in working-class denim and preaching socioeconomic equality through the magic of song and dance, its no wonder that Brit and the great Soviet Machine first make strange bedfellows here. At this point in their respective celebrities, the power vacuum that existed in those halcyon days of mice and sing-a-longs could have been filled by anyone. As much was true during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Lenin, anxious to ensure that the proletariat saw their rights protected from exploitative, capitalistic influences, made great strides in establishing his influence over and acceptance by the public work councils, known then as "Soviets." Through the work of his Bolsheviks and on the strength of a Russian Civil War victory in 1922, the embryonic USSR began to take shape as the the dominant power in the Near East.

Britney, after casting off her virginal Disney origins, at once arrived and cemented her position on a global stage of a different sort with her first hit single, "Hit Me Baby, One More Time." Her revolution was fought and won on the strength of this album, her snake skin innocence shed in favor of the schoolgirl seductress, her international relevance established seemingly never to be challenged. Not by Timberlake, a charming France to Britney's proud Mother Russia; sleek and sexy, contentious and seductive, but ultimately impotent in international affairs. And certainly not by Christina Aguilera, Spain for short, whose Franco-muddied internal politics and lack of any sort of world ambition hampered that nation's case for international recognition or respect for the next half-century.

Russia followed closely Britney's meteoric rise up the Billboard charts to mega-stardom by effectively fighting and aiding in the defeat of Hitler whilst managing a two front war in World War II and the subsequent acquisition of nuclear arms. Britney's two greatest weapons were the twin super-hits, "Hit Me Baby..." and "Oops, I Did It Again"; Russia's were first atomic, then hydrogen bombs. All four detonated with equally chart-stopping force, the demonstration of which sent both icons off of the map in terms of world respect. Russia developed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles; Britney countered with "Toxic." Locked in eternity much like the serpentine interlopers from the staff of Hippocrates, the two spiraled on, creating steadily a pattern of power gain followed by power consolidation, until at last achieving their respective peaks: Spears, with the release of "In the Zone," which debuted at number #1 on the charts, making her the only female artist in history to have her first four albums debut at that position, while Russia outmaneuvered the United States in the Space Race, beating the world's pre-eminent superpower not once by sending up Sputnik, the first man-made satellite in space, but twice by sending Yuri Gregarin, the world's first man in orbit.

Despite their respective achievements and unrelenting lust for more, chinks in the armor began to appear, barely noticeable at first, but like acne on a previously puerile face, more obvious and unavoidable by the day. At first, Britney's childish romances with the now infamous Timberlake, and later childhood friend Jason Alexander (a man Britney would eventually commit the rest of her life to for 55 hours), combined with her brief flirtations with the graft and vice of the adult world seemed blithe and elvish. They were enviable faux pas to be made, much like the globular translucence of stained glass windows or the textured brush strokes of a Van Gogh. Congruently, the Soviet Republic was suffering her own slings and arrows; long bread-lines, a distribution system of wealth and state-appropriated commodities that was grossly overburdened and underfunded, rampant government corruption. Still, despite their distasteful nature, they were good problems to have, as considered by those impoverished nations green with envy as well as malaria and spiraling HIV infection rates. A small price to pay for global respect and power, it might have been argued by the famine-stricken sovereignties of Central Africa.

Whether anyone wanted to recognize it or not, however, the wheels were rapidly coming off. The last of the four horsemen had appeared on the horizons, sent from the nether with a single mission of destruction: Mikhail Gorbachev and Kevin Federline. Gorby and K-Fed, two figures had emerged from their respective background roles and rose to new levels of empowerment. Mikhail was a bright young farmhand turned political activist and prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. K-Fed for his part was a talented backup dancer, complementing perfectly the woman that would one day be his soul mate for 3 years. Both began with the best intentions. Both would soon see their charges dead and buried. Gorbachev, ever the gentlemen, heeded the cries of his puppet governments for political sovereignty and elected to go first. First wielding the mighty Article 72, the USSR gave any and all satellite republics the opportunity to secede should that republic affirm such a measure by way of national referendum and 2/3 majority. Suddenly, what was one a proud and idealistic society became instead a smoldering pile of socialist borscht and broken dreams, with Gorbachev at the helm. The country had been professionally signed, sealed and delivered into the hands of warlords and mafia men. It's identity destroyed and surgically removed like the dog tags from a dead GI. The Nobel Commission, giving high marks for style in what had come to be widely regarded as the most beautifully orchestrated collapse of a sovereign nation in world history, a collapse punctuated by the fall of the Berlin Wall, awarded Gorbachev with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

K-Fed followed suit, assaulting Britney with a litany of drugs and alcohol, fathering two children in all before finally taking his fingers off of the flusher. In the spring of 2007, Britney's own Berlin Wall finally fell during a wild night out with new found pal Paris Hilton, showing the world that of which it spent years longing for a peak. What the international entertainment media and global paparazzi machine had been doing for years figuratively had finally happened physically. The wall had come tumblin' down, and more than once. As Britney's own personal descent into drugs and alcohol followed her political matriarch's, she too shed her international identity personified in this case by her impossibly silken hair, and finally her puppet republics. K-Fed fought for and ultimately won custody of both. Sean Preston and Jayden James had affirmed through referendum and subsequent 2/3 majority their right to individual liberty. The world, as we knew it, had ended. There were no winners; Only losers.

So where does that leave us today, you might ask? As fate would have it, there potentially exists a silver lining. If history can teach us anything, it has the power to teach us how to recover from even the most definitive of defeats. Russia, as she had now come to be called, found within herself a voice and a vision. She found the power to invoke the phoenix, the power to raise herself from the ashes and rebuild. It was not without difficulty. The corruption that flourished in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet regime is still a problem that hounds politicians and lawmakers in that society today. But it found a voice and a vision for strength in the eyes of one of its most trusted agents, Vladimir Putin. The lesson for not only Britney Spears but also ourselves is not that we need Britney. We knew we never needed her. Even Britney had become a student of such curriculum. The lesson is that for all the irony, to find her voice and her vision, the superstar that had for years thrilled us with her song and dance now needs us.