Things That Make Me Lose Faith In Humanity. Starring: Hip-hop cows, Devo 2.0, and Bratz.

[Currently Listening To: Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!]


So I always tell myself I'm going to update this site more often, and then I get busy and it simply doesn't happen. But I have an hour to kill right now so I'm going to ramble about nothing in particular. I'm in Canada at the moment. There's a lot of weird shit in Canada. Weird like slightly tweaked versions of stuff we have in America. Like there's some sort of radiation on the Canadian border, and everything mutates a little bit on its journey over here from the states. I was at Taco Bell and they had Fries Supreme, which was all the shit they dump on top of nachos to call it Nachos Supreme, but dumped on french fries instead. The fuck is that all about? Most disturbing though is this hip-hop milk campaign they have up here. Remember in the early nineties when the golden ticket of trying to market something to kids was by turning everything into a shitty rap? I fear those days have returned. I saw this amazing commercial before a movie last night with these dumb blinged-out chicks singing about milk with hip-hop dairy farmers doing dance numbers around a cow ("big bad bessie"), with Missy Elliot somehow involved. I was so horrified and amazed I had to look it up online, and thank God it's available for everyone to view. Behold: Drinkin' milk is straight hip-hop, yo.

My favorite part is when the dairy farmer turns his hat to the side. For some reason the confused and offended way that commercial made me feel reminded me of something I'd meant to write about a while back:

For a healthy span of my teenage years, Devo was the greatest band in the world. Sure, by the time I discovered them their heyday had already come and gone, but to me it was new and exciting. At a time when the airwaves were dominated by the post-Nirvana onslaught of generic "alternative" bands, the quirky synth-pop treasures of the late seventies and early eighties became a haven for me and my friends. While our peers were choking on the latest musical turds from Bush and Stone Temple Pilots, we were listening to Gary Numan, Brian Eno, The Talking Heads, and of course, Devo. With Devo it wasn't just the music but also the image, and the message, and the presentation. There was no modern equivalent of a band that dressed up in radiation suits and played keyboard guitars and made bizarre promotional movies about the themes of their music. Their message of social de-evolution and their satyrical take on pop consumerism became the perfect soundtrack to my disaffected anti-everything teen angst phase - and since I never really got out of that phase, they remain one of my favorite bands to this day.

So you can imagine my horror when I discovered Devo 2.0, a Disney-sponsored, kid-friendly resurrection of Devo in the form of five talentless tweens. Yes, this is a band of children who perform their own unlistenable, watered-down versions of Devo classics, with Mark Mothersbaugh's lead role replaced by an irritating and atonal 12 year old girl. The reaction I had when I saw this was something akin to how you might react if you walked in on your naked mother giving rectal birth to a purple leprechaun. And I don't mean like the playful little leprechaun who's always trying to steal your Lucky Charms - I mean like the creepy, wart-nosed, goblinesque leprechaun from those shitty old horror movies. Try to imagine her - imagine your own mother, squatting over the bathroom floor, sweating and straining, grunting with agony as the slimy, bloody, gnarled purple head of a mythical Irish troll creature begins to push out of her gaping rectum. Imagine then, as the head fully emerges from your mom's ass, smelling of feces and placenta, that the leprechaun's catlike yellow eyes open up and look right at you - right through your soul - as if the little newborn beast already knows all of your secrets. The stew of confusion, disgust, astonishment and horror you would most certainly be feeling is more or less the way I felt when I first discovered the abomination that is Devo 2.0.



Initially I thought "there's no way Devo has anything to do with this." Certainly they lost the rights to their songs - maybe Michael Jackson bought them like he bought all those Beatles songs, and he sold them to Disney, and the vile, wicked henchmen at Disney gathered around in the boardroom where they come up with genius ideas like straight-to-video Bambi sequels, and they tried to think of the worst possible thing they could do with this great music they had acquired, while Devo cried in agony as everything they once stood for was burned to the ground before their very eyes. But no. No, in fact not only was this done with Devo's consent, but Devo is actually heavily involved in the project, producing the album and even directing the videos. It is beyond disheartening that a band who once mocked consumerism is now embracing it in the worst possible way. And not only that, doing it incredibly poorly. This isn't just a bad idea, it's bad execution.

I encourage you to visit the Devo 2.0 website, and try to sit through the cringe-inducing music videos (go here if the ones on their site aren't working). Try to not want to pound the singer girl's little pre-pubescent head in with a sledgehammer when she makes this face:



Try watching "Beautiful World." The original was a fucking classic, with a legendary Chuck Statler music video that reinforced the song's cynical social commentary. Devo 2.0's version not only drives rusty spikes into your ears with how horrendously it's performed (the little keyboard girl's singing! fuck!), but it even changes the lyrics to be positive and kid-friendly, and in turn completely reverses the message of the song. Oh, and don't forget "Girl U Want" being re-recorded as "Boy U Want" so the singer girl doesn't sound like she's lezzing out.

I don't know what it is about growing old and irrelevant that makes brilliant people want to retread on their past successes and subsequently destroy them. George Lucas is of course the reigning king of this vile practice. When he re-released the Star Wars trilogy in 1997 and turned Jabba's palace into a fucking discoteque, we should have known what was coming. Some brave nerd should have assassinated Lucas - blown his blubbery neckless head off before he ever got the chance to dream up Jar Jar Binks and forever leave an oily brown skidmark on the once pristine tidy whities of the Star Wars legacy.

If kids actually swallow this Devo 2.0 turd, what's next? What other counter-culture icons of my disaffected youth could be reborn as kid-friendly slop? Maybe Nirvana 2.0, with a pint-sized Kurt Cobain who gets sugar highs instead of shooting heroin? How about Nine Inch Nails 2.0, with a fishnet-clad eleven year old girl singing "I want to passive-aggressively flirt with you on the playground like an animal"?

When I have kids, they're going to be totally bummed out, because I'm not going to let them erode their brains with all the stupid shit their friends are allowed to be into. They're going to play with good toys and listen to good music and watch good cartoons, whether they like it or not. No Timmy, I don't care if all your friends are listening to some Hilary Duff sugary kid pop bullshit, you're going to listen to the White Album and you're going to like it. What's that, Revolution No. 9 gives you nightmares? Don't be a pussy. Suzie, you can't have a pink toy cell phone that plays a Missy Elliot song when you push the buttons. You're nine years old, you're going to play with fucking Legos and they're going to make you smart. And not the new Lego kits with the big fancy custom pieces that take all the imagination out of it - you get square blocks. Build your own fucking rocket ship. Oh, and every time you listen to a Pussycat Dolls song, a kitten dies.

Speaking of which, toys for little girls are getting way out of hand. Girls have always gotten a bum deal in the toy department - while we boys were having adventures in outer space and transforming trucks into giant robots, the girls were... pretending to cook? Taking care of babies? Girls toys have always been pink plastic recreations of bland real-life exercises designed to groom them into becoming obedient housewives. Which is pretty fucked up, but not as bad as the new trend of girl toys, which is grooming a future army of vapid, slutty, club-hopping Paris Hilton shitbags. Case in point: Two of the most popular lines of girls merchandise right now, Bratz and My Scene. If you haven't seen these dolls, you probably haven't been in a toy store in the last few years. Both Bratz and My Scene dolls characterize slutty-looking girls with way too much make-up and collagen lips who wear skimpy clothes, talk on their cell phones, go shopping, hook up with guys, and go out to da club. You know, the types of things that eight year old girls should be thinking about. The dolls look like this:



Oh, and they even have hip-hop boyfriends. Yes, parents, encourage your daughters to aspire to be raped by these winners:



The Bratz dolls have even branched out into BABY Bratz. Yes, fucking infants slutting it up for a hot night out:



One of them even comes with a thong.

A quick visit to the My Scene website will give you a pretty good idea of how repulsive their collection is - be sure to watch the commercials for their new line of toys: "My Bling Bling" dolls. And this shit is for LITTLE KIDS. It's basically warming them up to start watching MTV and have their morals and intelligence beaten to a bloody pulp by the mindless, abhorrent filth MTV shoves down the throats of impressionable 14 year olds. The bottom line is that if you are a parent and you buy "bling bling" dolls for your little girl, you're a fucking shitty parent. There is not one single thing about these toys that even remotely on any level encourages intelligence or creativity. All it does is provide kids with a very tangible goal of growing up to be vacant, shitty, wastes of oxygen. If Devo were still alive and hadn't been killed and replaced by a bunch of fat old men who rape their own art so they can buy a new boat, I'm confident they would have a firm anti-Bratz stance.

Okay, I'm done ranting for today.

(thanks Tam for the rocket ship joke)