I haven't posted a photo of myself in a while, and since I'm due to go see a few online journal pals in L.A. this coming weekend, I thought I'd take a totally unretouched, utterly realistic photograph of myself and let everyone see how strangely my thick glasses distort my features. Okay, so it's not totally unretouched. I blurred the background out and brought up the brightness on my head but I didn't blend out my double chin or my smirk. In reality I am not pink and yellow, although my hair is a weird gradient of colors, but I can't seem to adjust the color balance of this photo to anything lifelike, so let's just call it an artistic effect.
I have spent much of this weekend noticing how bizarrely skewed television and music are towards teenagers. I'm sure I'm the last person in America to be surprised by this focus on the under 20 crowd, but now that I have actually looked into the trend I'm amazed. I don't watch much tv normally, maybe one hour a week, and I don't buy a lot of music any more, so I just wasn't paying attention. Then I had the opportunity to watch part of Dawson's Creek while waiting for a VH-1 music special to come on. What a shock.
I'd previously imagined Katie Holmes must be some kind of decent actress since the hype over her is big. Nuh-uh. Doughy-faced Katie Holmes' method of acting is to stamp her feet to indicate she's just a teen overwhelmed by her emotions, and then clearly articulate all her frustrations with her self-identity, her relationships, and the state of the world. Man, I wish I'd had a Hollywood screenwriter handle my teen angst. Plus all the teenage girls on the show dress like Second Avenue whores, which surprises me, but I guess merely indicates I am a geezer.
So next I hear this teen chick Brittany Spears because she's appearing at a youth oriented concert, and it turns out she can't sing and dance at the same time, d'oh! And her dance moves are pathetic, totally white-girl-aping-gangsta-moves and it's not indicative of heaping helpings of talent, but I think we've already established I'm a geezer and also she's more popular than Jesus, so, like, you know, I just suck or something. Brittany Spears is mediocre at best.
I'm a little fonder of the Backstreet Boys, whose videos I watched on some kind of MTV BB-athon, but I would really like them to write a pop song I could sing along to without being embarrassed. I hope they never collaborate with the Spice Girls. The lyrics would cause my head to explode. At least the BB can sing their socks off. The Spice Girls don't count as part of the teen trend anymore since I'm pretty sure all of them are old enough to drink now. They're so over.
To counteract all the pubescent pulchritude, I watched about three hours of Emergency Vets on Animal Planet. Then I scanned in a bunch of rubber stamped images and wasted a couple hours coloring them in. After that I listened to the new TLC cd, because they're close to 30 and therefore definitely not bubblegum any more. I liked the music a lot, but I got kind of depressed by their lyrics. Can you imagine me singing, "Nigga, you must be crazy, whatcha gonna do wid a bitch like me?" at the top of my lungs in the shower? No, I didn't think so.
After three days I've concluded that although it's fun to keep up with trends the music industry isn't catering to my taste or demographic any more. I can go back to spending my money on Swedish pop, Weird Al Yankovic, and classical music, knowing in my heart of hearts that I am officially over the hill.
Also slightly pink and yellow.
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