Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?

by Steve Lowe

  JWT also believes in “raising the creative bar as far as it will go. Then jacking it up a notch after that.” However, having already raised the creative bar as far as it will go, further notching up the creative bar will cause the creative bar to break. The creative bar will be completely fucked. That’s just physics.

  J. Walter Thompson further believes: “90% of the world’s surface is made up of ideas. The rest is water.” A brief look at an atlas or infants’ school geography textbook could have disabused them of this errant fallacy. Creative? Maybe—after all, they have completely made it up. But certainly not “industrious.”

  Leo Burnett (which does Heinz and McDonald’s) is also into “belief”: “We believe Disney, McDonald’s, Nintendo, Heinz and Kellogg’s are some of the world’s most valuable brands because people have gone well beyond merely buying them. These are brands people believe in. When people believe, they buy more, pay more, stick with a brand more and advocate the brand to others. And so belief is the ultimate brand currency.”

  Instead of all this gibberish about creative bars and making wine from water, really to convey the essence of their activities they’d all be better off with just one page of flashy swirly graphics, fading in these five words:

  We

  are

  emperors

  of

  shit

  CRITICAL REASSESSMENT

  Yes, for fuck’s sake. By which we don’t mean yes, as in “the affirmative.” We mean no—to Yes.

  In their lifetime, the prog rockers were critically reviled and were held in particular derision by the punk movement. There was a reason for this: They were so bad they made your ears want to die. However, having tried to wreck completely all music by making really bad music is no barrier to critical reassessment, the process in which rock critics look for a date on a CD, see 1973, and think: “Hmmmmmmm, interesting . . .”

  The criteria for critical reassessment reflect the high critical standards traditionally exercised by the music press. The criteria are:

  •You must once have put a record out.

  •Erm, that’s it.

  You might imagine that revisiting 1980s-era Genesis in a lavish five-CD, five-DVD box set (including remastered albums, rarities, outtakes, and a photo gallery of “rare tour memorabilia”) has scraped through the bottom of the barrel into the dark, dirty ground. But even now a few neglected cases are still, in our humble opinion, ripe for rediscovery:

  •Solo albums by members of Guns N’ Roses.

  •Salt-N-Pepa—The Later Years.

  •The George Martin stuff on side two of the original 1969 release of the Yellow Submarine album (which nobody has actually ever listened to).

  •Ashlee Simpson—The Kindergarten Demos.

  •Gary Cherone–era Van Halen.

  •U2.

  TOM CRUISE

  Writing a piece for Time magazine on “The People Who Shape Our World,” Tom Cruise waxed miracle about Mission: Impossible 3 director J. J. Abrams: “It’s hard to convey with brevity the extraordinary experience of knowing and working with J. J. Abrams. First of all, is there anything in a name—J. J.? Look at the Jays we have now—Jay Leno, J.Lo, Jay-Z—but he’s got two J’s. He was born to impinge and invade pop culture.”

  There are many reasons to fear Tom Cruise. There’s his fully functioning World War II fighter plane. The way he thinks all psychological problems can be cured by “vitamins and exercise” (he might himself consider a brisk walk down to Whole Foods). There’s all that stuff about the silent birth thing. Those films. But given that he believes we are descended from super-intelligent aliens (see Xenu), it is perhaps not wholly surprising that when he turns his hand to journalism, the results are utterly off their head and, well, look like they have been written by an alien.

  Anyway, Cruise finished his lavish eulogy by revealing that J. J. is a “loving husband to his beautiful wife Katie (can you believe this coincidence?) and father of three glorious children. Gotta give it up for that J2.”

  Can we believe that Abrams, like Cruise, also has a wife called Katie? Well, yes. Super-aliens: no. Two women being called Katie: We’re not feeling that to be too much of a stretch. It’s quite a common name: Katie Couric, Katey Sagal, KT Tunstall, Katie, the California Angels Rally Monkey. That’s four more, right there.

  CULTURE OF PRAISE, THE*

  As in, when describing an unremarkable work of artistic creation, the application of words like magnificent, unbelievable, an awesome achievement, and If you don’t think this is unfathomably great, I’m coming back with my rifle and the two of us are going to teach you some sense. Are these bringers of hyperbole being paid in sacks of gold? Or are they the subjects’ moms in disguise? According to these throwers of garlands, we live in an unparalleled age where a new masterpiece is being created by another genius roughly every twenty seconds as opposed to, say, every other year.

  If book reviewers like a book they’ve been given, they often claim it is “hard to put down.” Has anyone else except book reviewers ever noticed this phenomenon? Some books are even “dare-to-put-me-down” books. Soon we will be faced with “if-you-put-me-down-I’ll-rip-your-fucking-feet-off” books. And then where will we be?

  Hanging from awnings outside theaters, a succession of boards cherrypick key phrases like awe-inspiring, unspeakably moving, pure brilliance, and a courageous step into the void. It’s surprising audiences aren’t struck deaf, dumb, or blind by their experiences. At the very least they should have pissed themselves.

  Speaking of pissing yourself, actresses like Kate Winslet often find themselves referred to as “brave.” When recently asked by veteran CBS reporter Tom Fenton about being “an uncompromising, very brave actress,” Winslet replied: “Being brave is

  very important because sometimes, you know, you can find yourself in scary situations at work, you know, when there are scenes that are difficult to do. And you can’t run away from it, so you just have to go headlong into it.”

  We must all applaud Kate Winslet’s ability to cope with scary situations at work. But, we must also wonder, how brave is she really? It would be intriguing to see how she’d hold up faced with the challenge of, say, a burning orphanage.

  Watching her go headlong into that would indeed be “awesome.”

  D

  DANCE MUSIC AS THE FUTURE

  In the 1990s, many people thought dance music was The Future of Music and the Future of Everything; that catching a few DJ sets by Paul Oakenfold would eventually forge young people together as The Oneness—a single bubbling, bouncing organism strong enough to move any mountain. Although why you would want to move mountains is beyond us. Moving a mountain is the sort of project you would only embark upon if you were completely off your meds.

  These days, dance music’s main function is to provide excuses to wear robot costumes (Daft Punk), mash up hits of the 1970s and ’80s (Girl Talk), and help Damon Albarn find reasons not to record a new Blur album (Gorillaz).

  And that is the story of dance music.

  DEAD PROSTITUTES

  Why are all TV crime thrillers centered on dead prostitutes? Jesus, prostitution must be fairly tough already, without some hack bumping you off every ten minutes. We’re surprised there are any left. And it’s not even enough for them to be “dead.” Most of them also have to be “mutilated.”

  Cold Case, Without a Trace, Dexter, CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, CSI: Cleveland . . . plus all the Law & Orders, especially Special Victims Unit. Whenever the SVU writers run out of “ripped from the headlines” rape cases, you can bet Belzer and Ice T are gonna discover another dead hooker.

  And it’s not just on the boob tube, or in this case the blue-nippled, rigor-mortised boob tube. In movies, there are only two types of prostitutes: dead ones, and ones with a heart of gold. And if you glance at any crime/thriller book reviews—especially for the latest by James Patterson, who’s a literary Jack the Ripper—and you’
ll likely find: “Dr. Tony Hill is a clinical psychologist whose assistance is often sought by Detective Carol Jordan, with whom he conducts a hesitant waltz of the ‘will they/won’t they?’ variety. The mutilated body of a prostitute has been found.” Has it? No shit.

  DELICATESSEN COUNTERS AT SUPERMARKETS

  The pasta salads piled up in those quaint earthenware bowls are, of course, produced by the Italian matriarch up to her elbows in prosciutto out back, merrily crushing her own spices while joshing with the French peasant crafting his authentic cheese.

  Either that, or they’ve been mass-produced, loaded into plastic containers, transported across the country in a big lorry, removed from the plastic containers, and placed into said earthenware bowl to seem just ever so slightly more appealing than the absolutely identical ones in vacuum-sealed plastic multipacks on the shelves.

  That pasta salad? They’ve just cooked some pasta and then let it go cold. I will not take a number. I am a free man.

  DESIGNER BABY CLOTHES

  NEW DAD: HEY, HERE’S AN IDEA—LET’S GET THE BABY A MONOGRAMMED RALPH LAUREN POLO FOR $50 THAT IT’LL PROBABLY GROW OUT OF TOMORROW AFTERNOON.

  NEW MOM: GREAT. DO THEY DO BABY SOCKS IN, LIKE, GOLD THREAD? THAT’D BE GOOD.

  NEW DAD: YES, IT’S SO IMPORTANT TO DRESS THE BABY RIGHT—YOU KNOW, TO DANGLE WEALTH OFF IT.

  NEW MOM: MMM. OTHERWISE, WHAT’S THE POINT?

  NEW DAD: MAYBE WE COULD GET A HEAD-TO-TOE OUTFIT FROM MOSCHINO? IS THAT WHAT TIM AND CANDELABRA GOT FOR LITTLE, ERM, BABY? OR WAS IT DKNY?

  NEW MOM: TRICKY. WHAT WOULD GWYNETH DO? OH, AND THEN THERE’S I PINCO PALLINO! THEY’RE ITALIAN, SO THAT’S SOME EDUCATIONAL VALUE RIGHT THERE.

  NEW DAD: AND WHAT ABOUT THOSE $1,000 SILVER CROSS STROLLERS? I Want One! I Mean . . . The Baby Wants One.

  NEW MOM: Fucking awesome, yeah!

  NEW DAD: We could pimp it up real good—jack up the wheels, get some 26-inch rims on those babies, some leopardskin goin’ down . . . Cristal, pick up some bitches . . . ooh, yeah! I’m all excited . . . I think I’ll put the Jay-Z CD on.

  NEW MOM: Um, darling, you know what? I’ve been thinking . . . I’m actually quite bored with the baby now—I mean, we’ve had it for, like, eight weeks or something. Maybe we could drop it off at a Salvation Army or something? Like with shoes.

  DICTIONARY SERVICES FOR TEXT MESSAGING

  Dictionaries: not exactly in the spirit of the texting age. If these mobile dictionary services are meant as an enticement to stick strictly to the rules of the language, they conspicuously are not working.

  Or maybe they’re there to inspire greater linguistic flourishes when working out where to meet up and who has been doing what to whom. In which case, maybe we could fit other great reference tomes onto our mobile phones—like dictionaries of quotations for when the time has come to stand on the shoulders of the giants of erudition.

  “I believe it was aphorist and clergyman Charles Caleb Colton who first said, ‘Wen u hav nutn 2 say, say nutn :)”

  “Gr8”

  DIDDY DAY

  Anyone still wondering whether America’s moral code has gone through some particularly rusty scrambler should consider that Las Vegas has now instituted May 14 as Diddy Day, a special day to commemorate that latter-day Martin Luther King, P. Diddy. “Our hope is that he continues to bring his electrifying presence to Las Vegas,” said Mayor Oscar Goodman.

  What he might have done instead was to declare May 14 as Dido Diddy Diddy Dodo Day—a special day dedicated to the female singer-songwriter, the “electrifying” urban music mogul, and the extinct flightless bird formerly native to Mauritius. We’re not saying that would have been better, but it would have been different. A bitch to organize, though.

  DISASTER RELIEF DISASTERS

  When it comes to disasters, Western governments are like drunk uncles: forever making wild promises they have no intention of keeping.

  When Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America in 1998, nearly $100 billion was pledged by governments, but only 33% was ever delivered. After floods struck Mozambique in 2000, $439 million was pledged by governments—but only $219 million, or around half, was delivered.

  Most startling is the fact that, of the $1.1 billion pledged after the Bam earthquake in Iran in 2003, only $17 million ever turned up. That’s 2%. That’s one seriously drunk uncle talking some serious drunk shit about taking you to the zoo and stuff.

  “We never get all the money we are pledged,” says Elizabeth Byrs of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. As well as simply not paying up, governments also pull neat accounting tricks like diverting money that was to go to other needy situations, or making a big fuss of suspending affected countries’ debt repayments but all the while allowing the interest to mount up, so when the country does start repaying it has a ginormous sum to pay back.

  Harry Edwards, a spokesperson for USAID, the U.S. government agency responsible for distributing humanitarian and economic assistance funds, said: “A lot of countries don’t pay. The United States isn’t the only one.” He later claimed that, anyway, a bigger boy made him do it.

  Another trick is to count money spent on the military, which may offer assistance, as part of the total. That is, use the disaster as a way of subsidizing the military, recouping military expenditure from your supposed charitable donation. Is there nothing the U.S. will not milk to fund the military? We’re surprised there aren’t neo-cons wandering round the White House looking for stuff to melt down: “This big stamp and the pad—the one with the eagle on it—do we actually need this? We do? Okay. What about this picture of Abraham Lincoln? No one remembers who the fuck he was anyway, let’s put it on eBay.”

  Of course, even when the money is paid, there’s no guarantee it’ll actually help the victims. Take, for example, the most fucked up of all motherfuckers, Hurricane Katrina. Following the disaster, the U.S. State Department received $126 million from thirty-six countries and international organizations. One year later, Foreign Policy checked in to see how that money was spent and found that $66 million was allocated to FEMA, which then gave it to the nonprofit arm of the United Methodist Church, which distributed almost none of the money to Katrina evacuees. During those critical first 365 days afterward, the nonprofit disbursed only $13 million of the money, and that mostly to pay employee salaries. Because nobody should help homeless hurricane victims for free.

  Oh, and as for the remaining $60 million of that international aid? It languished for over six months in a non-interest-bearing account at the U.S. Treasury, before being signed over to the Louisiana Department of Education, which one year later—can you guess the next few words?—had yet to spend a dime! Listen, teachers, we know you guys aren’t used to seeing money, but please, share it with the entire class.

  DOCTORS

  In June 2005, a UK documentary offered a compelling reason why so many general practitioners manage that trademark double whammy of talking in slow, patronizing tones while also being utterly hopeless in the actual “helping people” department: They are either drunk or high on drugs.

  Or rather, one in fifteen of them is, anyway. The others are just pricks.

  DOCTORS ON DAYTIME TV

  There’s something that doesn’t really scream Hippocratic ideals about being paid cartloads of cash for sitting around on a sofa chatting about hysterectomies. Also, they’re always so fucking nice to everyone, which makes us think they can’t possibly be real doctors.

  PETE DOHERTY BLOOD PAINTINGS

  Romantic rock rebel, Kate Moss enabler, and poet Pete Doherty speaks to his generation. And what he mainly says is: “Give me some money so I can go and buy some crack with it. I’m literally crackers . . . for crack!”

  When Doherty was imprisoned for his various cracky crimes, UK newspapers ran extracts from his prison diaries: “I’m an innocent man. Wiggy only goes and gives me a stretch in chokey! Oh, my stars, the curdled days of toil and distress—
lay me down my rivers of blue chalk and tears. And that.”

  Doherty has famously broken down the historic barrier between musician and fan. Sometimes, he does this by removing blood from fans’ veins with which he then produces useless paintings for his Web site. In response to pictures of him seeming to inject an unconscious girl with heroin, he revealed that he was only taking blood from the girl’s arm for another painting—kind of the blood painter’s equivalent of running down to Pearl for some more watercolors. He wrote on his site: “The photos are stolen from my flat so . . . upsetting and personally catastrophic . . . how rude, secondly it’s a staged shot and what a fucking liberty to suggest I’d bang up a sleeping lass.”

  Yes, how rude. Says the man who went down for burgling his best friend’s flat. Of course, removing someone’s blood while they lie on the floor for a blood painting is the height of modern etiquette.

  Doherty has famously built back up the historic barrier between musician and fan by failing to turn up to many of his own gigs. Asked about this by NME magazine, he explained: “Yeah? In what sense did I miss gigs? Missed them as in fondly missing them? I didn’t miss any fucking gigs.”

  When the NME pointed out that he’d “missed” them in the sense of “not turning up,” Doherty countered: “And who did? Who did? Who did turn up? Let them show their faces. What do they want, blood?”

  Well, we know he’s got some.

  But maybe there is hope. During a 2005 NME interview, he refused to speak to the journalist until he gave him money to score drugs. He then jumped on the NME hack and tickled him and coercively removed his jacket because he liked it, then suggested that the journalist’s drink had been spiked with acid, then boasted about head-butting someone. By July 2006, he just wanted to tell the NME about his exciting new direction. So he’s moving away from drab mumbling of dull nonsense over listless strumming to . . . rap.

  So, rap, then. Oh, and—wait for it—reggae. Thankfully, here in the United States, we’ll never hear any of it. “Kate Moss’s crackhead boyfriend makes music? I thought he just smoked crack!”