Monday, September 5, 2011

Ke$ha v. Jesus

So I was in Target the morning of heading back home from my little road trip out of town.  I picked up a Paramore CD for the 3.5 hour drive because my car radio is stuck on scan and listening to that for hours on end would drive me schizophrenic.  Only when I got in the car and opened the CD I realized it was not Paramore but Parachute.  Shit.  I gave it a shot anyway because who knows, could be my new favorite band.  The music was palatable if a little choir-y in the background.  I let it pass but suspicions grew...syrupy love and loss lyrics, something about the tone...and then some song said something about "Jeremiah" and I knew I was fucked.  Christian Rock.  I bought a goddamn christian rock CD by mistake and listened to it for almost a whole hour.  sonofa...  I found the nearest exit off I-95 to remedy the situation and quick.

I found a Rose's department store in Hicksville, VA.  If you don't have a Roses's where you live, it's basically a Wal-mart but not as fancy.  The requisite Sunday morning shoppers littered the place: overweight, disheveled white chicks with their skinny, marginally thugged out black baby daddies in tow pushing cartfuls of cafe au lait toddlers.  The new American Gothic.  The only thing missing was a Maury Povich casting table out front.

Anyway, this Rose's had a discount CD rack.  357 thousand CDs for $3.99 and all of them George Jones, Conway Twitty or something similar.  Then I spied the New Release shelf.  Eminem, Rhianna, etc.  More in the direction I'm looking for.  I mean, nothing against Conway Twitty mind you, but my X lurves that guy and I didn't need 2 + hours whipping down memory lane if you don't mind.  What happened next, I can't fully understand.  All I know is that with a movement reminiscent of walking up the down escalator I grabbed a Ke$ha CD.  I know.  I justified to myself that this was a kind of anthropological adventure because the pop radio station at home plays Ke$ha songs every 25 minutes and with Thing 1 starting middle school I should find out what the hell is on his radar and the tramptastic early 80's Madonna was always my favorite and maybe this will be like that and what could be the worst?  fucking Ke$ha.  Here's your $12.50.  I surrender.  Ya got me.

So, like one does, I popped the CD in and blasted it.  Car dancing the whole rest of the ride back to Pleasant Valley.  Because I wanted to spend what little time I had left to myself in a state of utter frivolous abandon.  Mission accomplished.  Auto-tune is a bitch to sing along to btw but did I let that stop me?  You would be wise to guess I did not.

Do I have a newfound respect and admiration for Ke$ha after that experience?  Uh, no.  I still think she looks like she stayed out all night and her friends kicked her home through traffic.  After listening to her lyrics however, I have every confidence that's the look she's going for.  She's like the embodiment of 95% of the submissions to Texts from Last Night.  So yeah, the Ke$ha phenomenon symbolizes the filthy, glittery, impending demise of our society... but it's got a good beat and you can dance to it.

And I'd still rather listen to that than fucking christian rock.

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