The Cairo Complex

Paramore, the emo band headed by barely legal Hayley Williams, will soon be remaking No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” from the highly successful mid-90s album, Tragic Kingdom.

There’s nothing wrong with this perse. I have no issue with remakes and covers and such in and of themselves. What bothers me is that a song that I grew up with is now considered in need of a remake. It feels not that long ago that I was drooling over Gwen Stefani… You know, before she started enslaving Asian children. Now some angsty good-fer-nothin’ whippersnapper is going to be a hippin’ and a hoppin’ while uttering phrases like “totally, yeah, Paramore rocks; they totally like redid this like old song by some band from like forever ago.”

My friend hit it right on the head when he said all we’ve got to look forward to now are prostate exams that come up negative.  

I like Bjork… Sure, it’s a little embarrassing to admit it, but that’s the way it is. No point in fighting it. 

I’ll go say my Hail Marys now. 

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve recently been reading Chuck Klosterman’s Gen-X bible (apparently), Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.

Klosterman’s themes of generational clashes and general discontent have been floating around in my head and, coupled with my realization that I am in fact not from Generation X, I got into a bout of heavy meditation on the subject while driving to work this morning.

I started with things I “knew”:

After WWII, the “Greatest Generation” came home, and they were so happy that Hitler was dead that they all started making babies. They had just fought and driven back an evil empire (or several of them, depending on how you view capitalist imperialism and such and such), so a good bout of boinking was in order.

Anyway, the fruitful loins of our fearless Nazi hunters erupted with quite a “boom” and about 16 years later we had a whole bunch of people who loved smoking weed and walking around barefoot. Additionally, there were small pockets of people who loved to dress up in all black, beat on drums in coffee houses and smoke pot. Also of note, the younger brothers and sisters of these people were sometimes bitter about not being old enough to go out and smoke pot, so once they were older they started making punk music and smoking pot.

Let’s skip over the people who “came of age” in the 80s, because the 80s mostly suck.

So, it turns out all the pot smoking irreversibly affected human wetware and when all the hippies and beatniks and punks started making babies, the babies grew up to be shiftless layabouts who thought Pearl Jam was really profound. We generally call these babies “Generation X” because it’ll be really ironically funny when all of the sullen and “deep” icons of that generation end up on the debut of Hollywood Squares 2015.

It was about at this point that I started playing Nirvana’s “In Utero” to make the mood a little more angsty. 

Then there’s my generation, sometimes called “Generation Why” because our purpose hasn’t really been determined yet.

Side note: today’s “Emo Kids” are what happened when the bitter younger siblings of the Boomers got it on with people who really liked New Wave (yet another reason the 80s pretty much sucked).   

So, I’m just about done with Chuck Klosterman’s book, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, and I’m kind of in limbo with my reaction to the collection of meandering essays on everything from… Well, sex, drugs and Cocoa Puffs. 

My confusion stems from my research into Klosterman following one of the short interstitial-type chapters in the book, where Klosterman talks about his general disdain for hardcore hardcore fans and his friend’s funeral.

It started with a Google search, and then a look at the Wiki entry, followed by a more in depth look at interviews he’s done with various bloggers and such.

Klosterman’s body of work is impressive, no doubt. He’s worked for a lot of substantial publications and is pretty damned witty at times, but I was blown away by the number of people who declared him the voice of the Gen-X generation. Article upon article heralded this guy as the beginning and end of what it meant to grow up in the 80’s.

I mean, I’m not technically a Gen-Xer so maybe my perception here is skewed, but reading Klosterman’s book I felt like it was more a clever and occasionally insightful blog (something any of my friends might have written), not the voice of an era. More over, when I ask most people if they’ve ever heard of Klosterman, I get the negative response way more often than not.

It all makes me wonder a little bit about what it means to be a success nowadays. Perhaps the weight of celebrity is substantially skinnier when anyone can declare anyone a genius and have it seen by millions. Or perhaps, when the pages insisting on your importance have URLs with 50 slashes in them, you’re not really important at all. 

Last night in my car, I was singing with my iPod as I usually do. You know, something with a lot of tonal transitions and crazy falsettos. The norm.

Anyway, my hand accidently slipped and I turned off the stereo while trying to crank the volume. For the moment before the music stopping had registered in my brain, I kept singing… The realization was quick and cold… Good lord, I am a horrible singer.

I mean, I never thought I was a good singer so this isn’t a huge surprise, but I had no idea I was a veritable comedic gold mine for the first few episodes of American Idol. I took care to lower my voice and only lip-sync along for the rest of the drive. No one else was in the car but, to be sure, I had no intention of possibly offending other drivers with my belted out audio train wreckery. 

Perhaps lessons are in order? Though, I suppose it would be rather cruel of me to subject an instructor to my voice, seeing as I have no desire to sing anywhere other than my car and in the shower anyway.

Hrmm… Something to consider, I guess. Until then, a piece of tape over the Off button should suffice.