Sunday Screening

You're probably familiar with Glen Campbell, one of the most prominent producers of execrable 1970s countrypolitan music. You know his terrible signature song--

--and you know the one good song he recorded (so good, in fact, that many people rightly count it among the all-time great American songs)--

(pause to let "Wichita Lineman" sink in; listen to it again if you want)

--BUT. You probably don't know, as I didn't before I consulted Wikipedia, that in the early- and mid-1960s Glen Campbell was a highly regarded session musician who played guitar on everything from, this is true*, Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" to the Monkees' "I'm a Believer". Mull that one over.

AND you probably didn't know that Glen Campbell is still recording albums. Yes! Just this year he released an album called Meet Glen Campbell, because apparently both he and his producers are aging and don't grasp unidirectional time anymore; it contains covers of, among others, Tom Petty, Lou Reed, U2, and -- wait for it -- Green Day. Glen Campbell did a great thing by covering Green Day, because he took "Time of Your Life," already a song that makes sensible people gouge their eyes out, and managed to make it worse. Steel yourself:

I wanted you to hear this -- because now, for the rest of your life, every song you hear will sound that much better. Congratulations: you've been Glenoculated.

(NOTE: Another thing I learned, in the process of researching this garbage, is that "Time of Your Life" is actually called "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)". This surprised me, considering that at my high school, this was the song they'd play over the P.A. after a student had died. I understand that small class sizes were a priority in Ontario public schools, but geez...)

And now I'm off to weep for the world. Enjoy the rest of your weekends; this is an open thread.

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*N.B. I would be completely unsurprised if this isn't true.
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UNRELATED: Go over to Legion tonight, when you have a minute. I'm sitting next to Garrett and Mel, in our sad little self-hating Harvard version of the Flophouse, and they are brewing something interesting.

Sunday Screening

I try not to get sucked in by all the 2008 campaign mashup videos; this stuff is all so temporary. But I'd be remiss if I didn't point you to the new gold standard in YouTube politics, via the American Scene: BARACKY.

Now, the original Rocky was 1976. But I think it's fair to call Rocky a 1980s figure, inasmuch as Sylvester Stallone is a 1980s figure, and the Rocky franchise is a 1980s artifact. (For instance, see this classic scene from Rocky IV, which could only have been the Reagan era. Wow.) Certainly the Rocky message, about a heroic individual overcoming despair, seems rather ahead of its time in the "malaise"-ridden energy crisis days.

I bring this up because 1980s cultural forms seem to lend themselves easily to this business of armchair-propaganda -- recall the Obama "1984" bit that made everyone crazy last March -- which is probably because the aesthetic of the 80s rejected subtlety so completely. The sort of loud, obvious, balls-out style that characterized all of the 1980s understandably translates well into short-attention-span Internet clips. (Hence the Rick Roll, another popular bit of 80s trash, which is funny within 3 seconds and ceases to be funny after about 10.)

The 1980s... you know, I have written before about the total sensory deadening that came out of the 1980s, and frankly it's such a beautiful night I don't have the heart to go into it again. So I'm just going to give you one video, one, that tells you everything you need to know about that godforsaken decade.

This song was #1 on the U.S. charts the week I was born, in 1988. And that's nice, because it means everything that has happened in my entire life is an improvement:

Billy Ocean. Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car. And now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go take a shower and wash all the TERRIBLE off me.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everybody. This is an open thread.