1) Just Another Local News Story?

NBC Affiliate WAFF-48News, Huntsville, Alabama (29 July, 2010)

First you are struck by how almost blasé the victim is about her traumatizing experience; her outrage is the weariest kind. But then it’s her infuriated brother who turns from the reporter to the camera, and in the most ardent, unguarded, singsong manner imaginable, insults the fugitive attacker.

Is he for real? What to make of it?

2) No, Just Another Internet Sensation

A catchy pop song of course. Step in The Gregory Brothers, those four siblings best known for auto-tuning the news during the 2008 presidential race.

The Gregory Brothers, “Bed Intruder” (30 July, 2010)

On the 20th of this month, “Bed Intruder” was at 89 on the Billboard Top 100 and 25 on the iTunes download chart (Antoine Dodson is receiving 50% of all sales for having written the “lyrics”).

3) Hey I Know, I’ll Do A Cover Of The Parody. Ha Ha!

On YouTube meanwhile, the cover songs proliferate. Hear “Bed Intruder” — instrumental version — via piano, guitar, high school band, or Tsugaru-jamisen:

Mike Penny, “Bed Intruder Arranged for the Tsugaru-shamisen” (31 July, 2010)

4) Funnier, I’ll Do It All Slow and Soulful

You may prefer a straight-up cover version, voice and all, with ukelele, bass guitar, accordian, or drum accompaniment. No? Try this one.

John and Lindsey of VektorMusic, “Bed Intruder Cover” (9 August, 2010)

5) Look! It’s Me Next To That “Rape Video” Guy

Antoine Dodson, the man parodied in the song, has in the space of a month achieved minor celebrity. Here he is at Connor’s Steak & Seafood House, a pricey Hunstville restaurant he no doubt had never previously considered going into.

Antoine is rolling with it, perfectly willing to pose and sign autographs for “fans.” You’d think he’d been to some kind of celebrity training school. Or is being ready for instant fame just part of growing up in America? He has his own website, Twitter feed and Facebook page where you can buy t-shirts with the words “Hide Yo’ Kids, Hide Yo’ Wife” or “You Don’t Have To Come and Confess. We’re Looking For You!” screen-printed across the front.

He’s also done his first local radio commercial: “If you don’t call 1st Family Mortgage, you are so dumb, really really dumb. For real!”

6) “Cool, Uh… Well, That’s Cool… “

“How’s your sister feeling? Is rape common in the projects?” A few remember to pay lip service. Antoine reassures: “Our family, we don’t run around crying and acting sad, know what I’m sayin’, we just dust our shoulders off and keep going.”

By all appearances this is true. Here’s Antoine, as candid as can be, at the local NPR radio studio.

What is it that causes this radio host to struggle so painfully to form his questions? The fact that Antoine Dodson didn’t “do anything” to earn this interview, apart from embody himself for a few moments in front of a camera? (Antoine is the first person to acknowledge this). Or is it the tricky mix of race, sex and especially class politics at play in the whole Antoine Dodson story?

Maybe this is what the radio host means to say? “…This type of, you know, immediate attention (15 minutes of fame)… It’s pretty rare, like (especially for someone like you)… Have you prepared yourself to just kind of like, take this as a stepping stone to somewhere (employment, out of the projects)… or… are you going to try for something bigger (an unrealistic pipe-dream like writing sitcoms and plays).”

7) Seriously. What Does This Mean?

In Part One of that NPR interview, Antoine says: “I went to bed a nobody. I woke up again the next day and bam! Antoine Dodson. Everybody knows him.” The same thing happened to another “nobody” this summer.

Hungrybear9562, “Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10″

This video had been up for months when Late Night TV Host Jimmy Kimmel posted it on his Twitter page (@jimmykimmel): “My friend has declared this the ‘funniest video in the world’ — he might well be right.” Overnight, the eccentric loner who made the video, Paul “Bear” Vasquez, became “The Double Rainbow Guy.”

8) One Performance to Another

Countless spin-offs of course, including a decent song once again by the Gregory Brothers. Here’s one of the more original remakes of Bear’s rainbow moment.

ceciley, “Actress Does Double Rainbow as Monologue” (15 July, 2010)

9) Not A Waterfall, A Rainbow

Since “Double Rainbow” went viral, Bear Vasquez has continued to post videos, but a new self-consciousness has snuck in, at least when it comes to rainbows.

Hungrybear9562, “Double Rainbow Vernal Falls 7-2010″ (July 9, 2010)

10) He Gave Me This Wig

In fact, Bear Vasquez appears to have contradictory feelings about his sudden notoriety. In many of his videos and on his blog, he depicts himself as a “vessel of the Universe” with no need of money or attention and whose humble existence in Yosemite park as a dog breeder is sufficient cause for contentment; he has chosen not to place ads on his YouTube channel because it would “degrade” and “disrespect” a “sacred thing,” and his over-the-top Nature love rings true. And yet he expresses colossal gratitude at having been plucked out, invoking Jimmy K in beseeching tones as provider of astonishing riches, as a “genius,” even sometimes as an all-comprehending divinity.

Hungry Bear travelled to LA in late July for an inevitable appearance on the Jimmy’s show; the interview is quite charming. Did he have one of those after-the-big-show moments in front of the dressing room mirror, the time-honored moment of truth? You’re playing the clown, you’re failing yourself, you’re straying from the path…

No, he didn’t. He avoids it, fills his head with spiritual platitudes, fixes himself in a tunnel of mirrors.

Hungrybear9562, “Coming Down From Jimmy Kimmel” (July 22, 2010)

I was at a party recently, listening to a young man’s marriage proposal story. It wasn’t particularly dramatic or romantic: they had been together for about seven years, were both in their mid-20s, and had discussed marriage beforehand.

They were having lunch at a mid-priced restaurant in Little Italy. He didn’t really ask but rather, stated: “I think we should get married.” It was so off the radar that he must not have been in the least concerned that the waiter might bob along at le moment propice and say something mundane such as, “How’s everything here?” or, “How’re you guys doing for drinks?” His future wife said: “Good idea.”

Of course, there is no guarantee that something spectacular might not happen during the proposal that takes place at the wedding ceremony, arguably far more disruptive than a waiter at a restaurant.

Unfortunately, the spectacularity of the proposal event — and our scopophilia around watching people fail when they scale such great heights — is rather the rule than the exception. Popping the question must be momentous, and one way to achieve the moment is to pop it in the company of strangers.

In this context, we find a pernicious and advanced form of Schadenfreude:

I remember a conversation I had with a girlfriend many years ago. She told me that although she wasn’t certain she wanted to get married, she knew for sure that she wanted to be asked.

I pondered this for many years afterward, because it struck me as a fundamentally sadistic desire. She wanted to be given the power, when asked such a thing, to accept or reject the offer. Her acceptance of such an offer — proffered from bent knee — would make the man profoundly happy; her rejection would make him likely very sad.

Imagine the narcissism behind such a desire! To want to be asked. It isn’t surprising that she is now the wife of a man whose particular aggregations of connections, power and money are perhaps the only sufficiently effective foils to her narcissism.

The male defense, seeing another man rejected, is to pause briefly, “feel bad for the guy,” and continue to call the game. Stiff upper lip, moving right along:

The marriage proposal as public display or puerile stunt is clearly a recipe for disaster. Women don’t want their assent trivialized. It seems that those who might assay such tactics are referred to by Samantha Jones in “Sex and the City,” when she tells her friend Carrie Bradshaw, in an episode of the first season, “Don’t you dare turn into one of these married assholes, or I’ll kill you.”

I do wonder if the spectacle of success or failure is more important to these public proposers than the fact of getting married. If the marriage proposal is supposed to be considered a gift, why is it important that it be publicly displayed? If it is not to be considered a gift but an important life decision, is it more important that a stadium of strangers witness it, than that it should come to be, or not to be? Is it so necessary that one’s existential happiness or woe appear before an audience, and one’s availability or lack thereof, announced?

If pop the question you must, it’s possible to determine the scenarios that are most likely to fail:

- Nyla Matuk

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In high school, I was what my boyfriend now refers to as a “drama pet.” My school did two theatrical productions a year — a Shakespeare play and a musical — and for my five years of secondary education, I was in every single one. I worked my way up from the chorus line, climbing the Royal West Academy theatrical ladder until, in Grade 11, I landed a lead role (the fact that my singing voice remained unmarred by the ravages of puberty gave me a significant competitive edge).

The last musical production we did was “Fiddler on the Roof.” I had received a copy of Norman Jewison’s film version as a Bar Mitzvah present.

Upon watching it, as much as I did not want this to be the case, I immediately recognized a kinship with the character of Motl the Tailor. When I, a gawky kittenish lad of 17, was cast as Motl the Tailor, my fellow drama pets smirked, rolled their eyes, and declaimed (in that inimitable tone unique to veterans of amateur theatre): “Of course. Typecasting.”

Norman Jewison, “Miracle of Miracles” from “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971)

For those not in the know, “Fiddler on the Roof” takes place in early 20th century Russia, and concerns the trials and tribulations of Tevye the Milkman; specifically, his quest to marry off his daughters.

Motl is the gawky, shy, kittenish tailor of the fictional town of Anatevka (in the Broadway and flim versions), who, against all odds, overcomes his stammering bashfulness, and through his unerring earnestness, proves his worth and gets the girl of his shtetl dreams, Tevye’s eldest daughter Tzeitl.

(A brief aside, for those interested in Canuck film trivia — in my high school production, the role of Tevye was played by a certain celebrated young rising actor/director of Canadian Cinema whose recent film, by all accounts, is a roman à clef of life in our alma mater).

I gave a rousing performance (I apparently made my best friend’s mother cry during my Miracle of Miracles solo), despite the fact that, at the time, I was just beginning to come to grips with the fact that I would have been much more personally invested in the role were I declaiming my undying love to the Rabbi’s son, or one of the other yeshiva bochers.

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I am not yet 32, but I have been looking forward to that particular birthday year for one reason, and one reason only.

William Friedkin, “The Boys in the Band” (1970)

I have been practicing that line day in and day out since I first saw this film, this toxically self-loathing paean to pre-Stonewall New York gay life.

For those not in the know, “Boys in the Band” was among the first movies to tackle what was then scandalously referred to as the “homosexual lifestyle” head on. Based on an off-Broadway play, it centres around a group of friends who congregate for a patio party thrown by Michael on the occasion of Hallie’s (née Harold) 32nd birthday. The evening wears on, the drunkenness gives way to messiness, the party games become more catty, and it inevitably ends in a sloppy wet orgy of self-doubt and self-recrimination.

(Just FYI: the impatient can feel free to begin the first clip at the 8:55 mark)

William Friedkin, “The Boys in the Band: 11/12″ (1970)

William Friedkin, “The Boys in the Band: 12/12″ (1970)

The only one to navigate these choppy black waters unscathed is Hallie, who, patience finally exhausted by Michael’s attempts to prove everyone as damaged and guilty as he is, delivers the crushing moral truth; he then heads for the door and leaves with the final, compassionate “call you tomorrow.”

I identify deeply with Hallie, my fellow gay Jew; how could I not? The lacerating wit; that particular, seemingly paradoxical combination of prickly, armored irony and self-doubting vulnerability (just now, re-watching that clip, I had a heart-pang at hearing him declare his need to “get up the nerve to show my face to the world”); we even have the same laugh.

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The actor who portrays both Motl and Hallie is named Leonard Frey. When I found out that these roles were played by the same man, the same gay man, the same gay Jewish man, I was ecstatic. “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Boys in the Band” heretofore represented these vastly disparate parts of my life; and here was this man — another willowy, kittenish, dramatic gay Jew — who also navigated these very same roles, negotiating them seamlessly (he earned an Oscar nomination for “Fiddler on the Roof”), collapsing the two grand narratives of my coming-of-age into a year’s worth of work (”The Boys in the Band”: 1970; “Fiddler on the Roof”: 1971).

(A brief aside, in the interest of thematic completeness: in the Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” Frey played Mendel, the rabbi’s son).

Of course, Frey had a much more varied career than that — on Broadway, television and other movies. But this is immaterial to me. In that single year’s work, he laid a kind of cosmological groundwork for me, reflecting the two pillars of my identity.

Whereas I had placed those pillars on opposite sides of my self’s temple, Leonard embodied them both equally, hopping from one to the next as if they were neighbours. Leonard Frey, member of my tribe, my brother in arms: call you tomorrow.

- Sholem Krishtalka

B-Movie, “Nowhere Girl” (1982); images from “Metropolis” by Fritz Lang

This combination of two small, beautiful things — ancient film clip and 80s pop song — is visually about a human and a machine, a human trying to waken humanity in a machine. Aurally, its about a human trying to waken feeling in another human. The human in the song is a girl who is acting like a machine, that is, robotically repeating a pattern of life that doesn’t allow anyone or anything to touch her.

The pathos and fun of film and song put together is partly in the contrast between the demon-faced, dead-limbed scientist (all sulpher-eyed evil plus open-mouthed buffoonery: ‘What about this pronged thing? Maybe I’ll stick that in this other thing! Yeah!’), and the glowing mystery of the machine.

The mash-up is not about “metal and technology crashing into flesh,” as described in Markus Kirschner’s “Fucking Machines.” The song is about the mechanical nature of human feeling and non-feeling, a theme deliciously present in the music of the song even more than the words; delicate, plaintive melody expressed in manic synthpop. The clip is from a movie about powerful people trying to seduce and control other people through a machine that will mechanically trigger raw emotion.

This is seduction at its most basic; the seducer has less actual feeling than does his or her object, and so can artfully present a mechanical imitation designed to waken and then manipulate the real thing — which then, curiously, feeds the machine.

Together song and flim clip are playfully and incidentally about the machine that is us. Or part of us. Being human machines, it’s hard to say when we are controlled by, say, the machine of instinct or when we are nonmechanically responding to love. Or hate. Or seduction. Or something else.

Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.comRidley Scott, “Blade Runner” (1982)

This is a scene from “Blade Runner,” a movie based on Philip K. Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” The plot concerns a slave class of androids who, because they have developed the ability to feel, have become dangerous, and so must be hunted down by hired killers like the one played by Harrison Ford.

Stories about machines who turn out to have feelings will always be poetically fascinating not because (to paraphrase Kirschner) we are embracing the fake, but because what is fake and what is real in a human is sometimes impossible to separate, and so sometimes impossible to differentiate. Machines are in some ways the opposite of the vulnerable body; in other ways, they are a reflection of its nature. Sometimes the feeling machine is dangerous; sometimes it is poignant.

I find this almost too painful to look at; it feels a little obscene to use it in this context. I mean no disrespect to the man who made it, who did, after all, display it for public viewing. What I find astonishing about it: whatever its maker’s intentions, it is a picture of someone whose human feeling has been so badly hurt that he has for the purposes of this video become, in sight and sound, as a machine.

Pain is a purely animal/human experience; no machine feels pain. Yet emotional pain in humans sometimes takes on a rote, compulsive quality, something people keep helplessly repeating or referring back to for an impossible-to-understand complex of reasons that over time takes on a life of its own and mechanically operates regardless of what the hurt person wants or thinks he wants. In other words, the human becomes a screaming creature caught in the cogs and wheels of the machine his own feelings brought into being — or it is his reaction to his feelings that have brought it into being?

When I first watched the heart-broken man, I was first struck by the way he described his relationship to his wife, in terms of marriage vows, obeying the rules of the contract, refraining from abusing her, the good financial situation he provided, his amazement that she would desire someone who could “not even afford his own place.” As hurt for him as I felt, his ideas of relationship seemed mechanical, unaware that passion or love has nothing to do with things like vows or good financial situations. But as he continued, it was impossible not to hear that this man’s love for his wife is powerful, pure and real; it is also mysterious, and he is only expressing it in the language he has at hand, which even he probably knows is inadequate.

But what if the reason the wife can’t feel it any more is that, as strong and pure as it is, it’s somehow become detached from her yet continues pumping away regardless of her? After all, the heart, which we traditionally speak of as the locus of our deepest feelings, is a kind of functional little machine, complete with valves.

The second thing that struck me was much more sad: that he needs to express himself into a YouTube machine because he has no one close to talk to.

Ridley Scott, “Blade Runner” (1982)

This is the last scene from Blade Runner. The android, at the moment of triumph over its adversary, has run out of juice and expired, choosing finally to spare his enemy in a display of humanity more human than anyone has shown him. The fake has turned out to contain something more real than “real” understood, and not because the fake was somehow better: its motor has simply broken down and loosed its metal claw.

The deepest reality is finally glimpsed as it disappears, much as we might glimpse a pure and ephemeral feeling flitting through the unbearably complicated and inadequate machine of our fleshly brain, our wind-up personality.

Mgawl singing “Nowhere Girl” by B-Movie

- Mary Gaitskill

If you had to give a name for the kind of film Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” is, I’m guessing you would not come up with “Romantic Comedy.” Maybe you would have opted for “Horror?” “Gothic?” But take a gander at this, if you haven’t already.

Thanks to some creative editing and the ongoing miracle that is YouTube, you can see this homemade trailer, renamed simply “Shining,” presenting the movie as unlikely example of a genre to which it does not belong: romantic or domestic comedy. It’s upbeat, sentimental, and pretty much everything works in the end. Not how you remembered it.

Among the great burgeoning archives on the internet is an immense cache of film trailers, which, until recently, were hardly accessible as such. In the olden days, you would have had to go to a film archive to get them after the fact: no video store in their right mind would stock a two-minute trailer or even compilations of them. Now you can view the trailers for thousands of major and minor movies of the past and some decidedly offbeat films. And with the renewed prominence of the trailer comes its bastard offspring, the spoof trailer, of which hundreds now circulate on the internet.

Tech-savvy kids and the occasional adult take snippets of scenes from the film and recut them to have them mean something (almost) completely different. Skewing the soundtrack can also make a huge difference. So, for example, in this version of “The Shining” the perturbing high-modernist dissonances of a Ligeti are replaced by Peter Gabriel’s unduly cheerful “Solsbury Hill,” turning the emotional world upside down.

And that annoying voice? The spoofs make the original trailers, with their overbearing deep-throated, sensitive-but-macho voices of someone who has seen more films than Quentin Tarantino, seem all the more like the trumped-up things they are.

Aside from the sheer entertainment value of the good ones, these send-up trailers can teach us things. “Shining” reminds us how much depends on where and when any given incident occurs in the sequence of the film. Sure there are lighthearted, corny, and calm moments in “The Shining,” but we know, from one clue or another, that problems are “just around the corner” in this film of claustrophobic corridors in an otherwise vast hotel set in a boundless landscape. The trailer shows the separate moments to building blocks and motifs and incidents whose meaning will alter radically based on the position in a sequence.

Take marriage, say: If you’re a character in a Jane Austen novel or a Shakespeare play, you should try to postpone the wedding until til the end of the book. If it’s Austen and you get married early on, it means you’re a minor character; if you’re in a Shakespearean tragedy, you don’t want to get married in Act I, like Othello and Desdemona. Had it been Act V, no problem. But for a major character to get married in Act I is really bad news.

The mock trailer for “The Shining” tends to reverse sequence of things, having what appear to be troubling things come first and the sentimental or even sappy things come second or last, taking them out of their content and now implying, improbably, some grand resolution in the end.

The phenomenon should have legs. From “Mary Poppins” recast as a horror movie to any film with a series of what could vaguely be construed as homoerotic glances or embraces being turned into “Brokeback“…

Whatever, the possibilities are more or less endless. The more pretentious the original, the better.

And you can try this at home.

- Ian Balfour

1) I Wanted To Become An Astronaut

The MARS500 Study (Moscow, June 2010)

Those poor bastards — three Russians, and one man each from France, Italy, and China — have been locked in their cramped model ship in Moscow for just over a month now. They have another 16 months to endure — the time, it is supposed, to fly to Mars, stay a month, and return to Earth.

No TV, no Internet, meagre food rations, near zero privacy. “You know that song by Elton John, “Rocket Man?” I want a future like that.” Hmm, ok.

2) It’s Gonna Be A Long Long Time

July is the anniversary of humanity’s first Moon landing — July 20, 1969 — to this day an awe-inspiring achievement, yet unrivaled (though there’s talk of renewed missions).

The risks were enormous; Atlas fuel rockets had been routinely blowing up at Cape Canaveral; Apollo Saturn computers had less processing power than a cellphone. But hey, the Americans made the round trip. Not the men we thought they were at all.

wilcobr, “Elton John - Rocket Man” (video: 2007; song: 1972)

3) Sitting In A Tin Can Far Above The World

Half a billion people watched live as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin emerged from their tin can. They spent 21 and a half hours on the lunar surface, collecting rocks — 50 pounds worth — and taking pictures.

Michael Collins meanwhile was orbiting in the Columbia, awaiting return of his colleagues. Mission Control was recorded to have said: “Not since Adam has any human known such solitude as Mike Collins is experiencing during this 47 minutes of each lunar revolution when he’s behind the Moon with no one to talk to except his tape recorder aboard Columbia.”

SpaceRip, “Apollo 11 on the Sea of Tranquility” (2009); Music: Chopin, “Trois Nouvelles Etudes, 2nd in A flat major“

4) You’ve Really Made the Grade

A few days before Apollo moon landing, David Bowie — 22 years old — released the song that would become his first big hit. Here he is later that year at the Ivor Novello Awards accepting the “Special Merit Award for Originality.”

David Bowie, “Space Oddity” (Ivor Novello Awards, 1969)

5) No Happiness For Men In Space

July, 1969 may have been the month the Russians lost the race to the Moon, but it’s also when their own Andrei Tarkovsky was writing a most remarkable screenplay based on the Stanisław Lem novel “Solaris.” Thank the stars.

Andrei Tarkovsky, “Solaris” (1972)

6) Life After Darth

The 70s were filled with dreams of space travel and the deep and dire questions they provoked. “Star Wars,” released in 1977, sort of changed the tone. That year, French TV director, Rémy Grumbach, devised this fitting tribute to the George Lucas franchise.

“Star Wars Choreography” (Rémy Grumbach, 1977)

Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Monsieur Grumbach was way ahead of you.

7) We Make The Same Mistakes All Over Again

30 years later, a few North American scum used the theme of space travel to be all, like, nostalgic and ironic and cool.

LCD Soundsystem, “North American Scum” (2007)

8) You Do It For The Love

Diego Urbina of the MARS500 Study (still locked inside the model spaceship) said he imagined a “future where people will be going frequently to space and we will be working in space and it will be very usual.”

And why not? Space olympics anyone?

The Lonely Island, “The Space Olympics” (from “Incredibad,” 2009)

9) Pop!

meesolee, “A Can of Pop” (set to a little Busby Berkeley, 2007)

10) Out Of An Ill-Designed World

Final thoughts to Andrei Tarkovsky who gives us, no less, the meaning of life on Earth. Is space travel a means to spiritual enrichment, or another distraction from our main purpose in life?

Andrei Tarkovsky, “A Poet of the Cinema” (by Donatella Baglivo, 1984)

Just use the force.

Steve Earle, “John Walker’s Blues” (2002); video by MBjorkman

Whenever I hear about a new song or performer and want to get a taste, I go to YouTube. When I want to see Betty White’s SNL opening monologue, or find some vintage Muppets episodes for my kids, I go to YouTube. It is our 24-hour living video library, a free-for-all of the absurd, the sublime and the notable.

But one thing that Youtube doesn’t do particularly well is dialogue. I have “liked” dozens of videos, from violin performances to political commentary, but I have almost never felt the need to add to the “Comments” sections, apart from a sick professorial compulsion to correct spelling and grammar. This is largely because most of the comments aren’t conversations at all. Many are fan-posts (“LOL!!”), with the occasional mean-spirited critique/graffito sprinkled in (“This is the stupidest post I have ever seen.”).

Kuitman’s fabulous ThruYOU project is the exception that proves the rule here – it takes Kuitman’s tremendous technical virtuosity to make his disparate, often lonely musicians speak to each other.

One occasionally gets the semblance of a debate by posting controversial video, or a familiar clip about a controversial subject. Search “Abortion” and you’ll see what I mean. But because most of these posts originate as propaganda for one side or another, the response tends to be similarly propagandistic, and contains more comments along the lines of “Fuck you, you self-righteous cunt” than meaningful dialogue.

This is partially true for the version of Steve Earle’s song “John Walker’s Blues” that MBJorkman uploaded here with accompanying images of John Walker Lindh.

If you don’t know the story, John Walker Lindh is the suburban American (raised in Marin County, California) who converted to Islam as a teenager (supported by well-meaning, divorced parents), and later fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He is currently serving a 20-year sentence for his role in the so called “prison uprising” during which the CIA officer Mike Spann was killed. See, if you like, the CBS interview with his parents, who are trying to get his sentence reduced:

Marilyn Walker & Frank Lindh, CBS News (2007)

Lindh represented, at the time, a bizarre and terrifying possibility – that a normal, if troubled, suburban boy would become one of them. Remember this was in late 2001, very soon after the attacks on the Twin Towers, and during a time when most Americans felt pretty united on who the bad guys were. If a kid from Marin County could get swept up in violent fundamentalist Islam – well, then, we really are under attack.

In the wake of this strange time, Steve Earle included the song “John Walker’s Blues” on his album “Jerusalem,” which came out in 2002.

Earle is, in my opinion, one of our very best singer-songwriters, not least because he is willing to be ugly in his songwriting. “John Walker’s Blues” is an attempt to understand how “just an American boy, raised on MTV” could become a jihadist.

From the very beginning, then, Earle was looking for the more complicated answer than the one being offered in public discourse: Not “how do we stop them?!,” but “how do they become who they are?” It’s a question that only the more informed (and often politically isolated) academic critics were asking in the early months after the 2001 attacks.

The song’s struggle to get inside Walker Lindh’s head is ultimately incomplete and unsatisfying: “So I started looking around, for a light out of the dim, and the first thing I heard that made sense was the word of Mohammed, peace be upon him.” Why Mohammed and not Herbert Marcuse? Or John Caputo? Or Naomi Klein?

But if we don’t ultimately understand Walker Lindh’s path, we can certainly sympathize with his frustrations, as Earle portrays them. And the mix of discourses is masterful: religious terminology blends seamlessly in with the remnants of Lindh’s American pop-culture upbringing: “He don’t understand that sometimes a man’s got to fight for what he believes” is an almost verbatim cop from Kenny Rogers’s 1979 hit “Coward of the County,” something we can imagine Lindh listening to in his childhood.

Kenny Rogers, “Coward of the County” (1979)

On my first hearing of ”John Walker’s Blues,” I found myself curious to learn the religious context of “A shadu la ihala allah Allah,” and to understand the chanting of the muezzin clipped in at the end. In other words, the song makes me want to know more about a person, and a type of person, who was – especially in 2002 – subject to all sorts of over-simplifications. This is a great accomplishment for a 3 ½ minute pop tune.

MBjorkman’s upload of Earle’s song is accompanied by a progression of four photos. First, in a photo courtesy of the Lindh family, we see the recognizable teenage Lindh newly converted, as if in costume. Then, the more anonymous Lindh in a kefiyya headdress, posed with a blank red background suggestive of the photos of other radical jihadists who expect to be martyred. Then the ubiquitous CNN photo of a wounded Lindh on a stretcher, with blast marks on his face and a horrible blankness in his eyes that is the common stare of all shell-shocked soldiers.

The last image, taken by military personnel, of Lindh about to be transported back to the US, strapped down, naked, and blindfolded, makes me angry all over again, though I’m no longer sure at whom. What I do know is that Steve Earle’s raw guitar is my anger’s voice and its music.

But I started this wanting to talk about dialogue. Today, MBjorkman’s upload has had over 80,000 views, and nearly 400 comments. Many are of the typical cartoonishly reactionary American type, like chord972’s: “This is one stupid video; no more checking out steve earle’s music for this listener. John Walker? hope he rots.” (The professor in me wonders at the grammar here – correct usage of the semi colon but erratic capitalization – why?) But there are also a few that seem to side with jihad, like MiketheMuslim’s comment: “Allahu Akbar. Victory is through Him alone.”

Others have been removed by the YouTube administrators, perhaps for abusive language, or perhaps for incitement to violence. The highest-rated comments are those that defend Earle’s songwriting, as from ediramaa: “For once i see ppl trying to understand the other side of the story it takes brave ppl like steve earle. If more ppl thought like that we wouldnt be in this shit we are now.”

What I love about this is the rawness of the dialogue, and the inclusion of voices from such disparate sides of the story.

These days, if you wish you can turn on Fox News or read the Huffington Post or follow blogs from any range of perspectives if you want some fuel for your political fire. Or you can tune into a staid news deliverer that attempts (imperfectly) to provide “objective analysis.” We all know that too many so-called debates are either sound-bite contests or overly-polite analyses that approach issues from a no-less-problematic emotional distance. Fire or ice. The “Comments” sections of news websites like the CBC or CNN are better, but they tend toward a certain narrow range of vocal registers – the debate is vigorous, but less refreshingly chaotic.

For some reason, MBjorkman’s upload has generated a kind of cross-disciplinary, multi-vocal debate on everything from religion, to American colonialism, to Steve Earle’s songwriting ability, to being a “hard man,” complete with gratuitous name-calling, familiar political truisms, and the occasional moment of insight.

As an expression of the persistent pain of the wounds that John Walker Lindh, and Steve Earle’s song, represent, there’s something loud and unruly and real about it. It’s a rare case when YouTube becomes not just about public access, but about public discourse.

- Adam Sol

Recently, a newspaper columnist friend who writes about relationships from the male perspective surveyed a few of the women he knows. He wanted to know what words we love to hear during sex. He also wondered if our men were vocal lovers or, on the whole, mute types. And he asked us to say, specifically, what things can be said and in which manner to get us aroused.

The song and video “Swimming in Your Ocean” by the Crash Test Dummies came to mind. Brad Roberts sings to an audience of captivated women — who show mild surprise or motherly understanding — confessing what it is like for him to be her lover. Sex is swimming in her ocean (a euphemism like any other, such as the one for giving birth: look what the stork brought); he kneels before her bounty; he hopes his seed will find purchase in her soil.

Crash Test Dummies, “Swimming in Your Ocean” (1993)

Decidedly, these are not the arousing words women long to hear, even from a man with such a deep, masculine voice.

I told my journalist friend that there is a tipping point when too many words from a man during sex became a turn off; talk should be limited to intermittent but powerful and definitely profane information; arbitrary judgments, orders and directives. And I think it’s arousing to hear just how I, as his lover, make him feel like a man. But for “seed [to] find purchase in my soil,” to “kneel before my bounty,” and to “float aloft on creams and scented lotions”? These words are not admissible in the ongoing and limitless project of arousal.

Just as bad writing makes the reader cringe, bad sex talk is deeply embarrassing to the listener. Lover, I feel shame that you fail to make even one aesthetically correct judgment in your pillow talk. But I am equally ashamed by your poetry, by your lousy prose. Perhaps bad sex talk could be included in a film like this one, on the subject of bad writing:

Vernon Lott, Trailer for “Bad Writing” (2010)

Bad writing is attributed in this film to dishonesty and falseness, and characterized as under-confidence in the idea that what you are is good enough. It makes me think of the orgasm scene in “When Harry Met Sally.”

When Sally questions Harry’s confidence that women always have a great time with him in bed, and his belief that their orgasms have always been real, it’s a nudge. Sally’s performance shows that a woman faking it isn’t nearly as hard to accept as a man deluded about his capacity to give pleasure. It’s as if he’s being told he’s going to have to work harder (perhaps with words, with something more than braggadocio) to get women aroused—that it is they who have been lying to him all this time instead of the other way around. Deflationary indeed!

Rob Reiner, “When Harry Met Sally” (1989)

After all, if men walk the walk, they should talk the talk. Maybe it’s time they said something. Something good.

Captain and Tennille, “Do That To Me One More Time” (1979)

- Nyla Matuk

“Retail Rage in Toronto” (June 27, 2010)

At first I thought how there was a touch of the fairytale in this video. I saw it in the wild, fantastical desperation of this new hero of the people—demanding his rights, asking the questions that everyone else around him is probably wanting to ask.

The hero, in front of this Mordor of shopping (the Eaton Centre), demands not only that the gods let him in but that they give him an explanation: “Why are you closed? Tell us why you’re closed. Why? Tell us the reason. Why? Why? Why? I wanna go shopping in the Eaton Centre,” he screams rattling the doors.

In my fairytale version I imagined a giant diaphanous figure descending somewhere from the rooftop, slowly, gently, hovering in front of the hero, ready to listen to his woes. She’s a female god, a patron of shoppers, perhaps a bloated, helium-balloon version of Carrie Bradshaw. “What is that you search for, shopper?” In awe of her sparkly, moving form, he is mute for a moment. Then, in the staccato whisper, he says: “Why are you locking your doors to the public. Tell us the reason.”

In her soft, melodious voice, the goddess tells him about the G20 weekend, and the security measures, while gently steering him away from the glass door into the sunset of Dundas Square.

This is not what happens in real life. In real life the man rages on, frustrated, with empty bags. He wavers between telling the cameraman to fuck off and, in a mournful tone saying, as if, again, complaining to gods who won’t listen: “No, no, it’s closed. It’s closed.” His voice sounds child-like, pleading.

I wish someone would fucking open the fucking door for him.

There are no dance remixes of this video yet. Anyone who’s ever heard Christian Bale’s freakout remix, knows, however, that “Who gave you the right? Who gave you the right? On what right do you exclude the population?” and “We want to shop!” just begs to be made into a nice techno number. And I’m sure, by the time this essay gets published there will be a couple of those. Maybe even mixed with snippits from Christian Bale’s on-set freakout.

While writing this, the original video got taken down. It’s possible that its creator felt guilty; it’s possible that like me, he laughed and let others laugh at it but then stalled, no longer comfortable with ignoring the fact that there’s something seriously wrong here. Maybe it was the tension of the city under siege, the freaky animal behaviours that Toronto witnessed during the G20 weekend that caused this man to snap? Maybe it was a mental illness manifesting itself, or maybe this shopping experience was the only thing he had come to rely on inside some kind of personal chaos?

I watched this video a few times to write down the dialogue and something struck me. Again, maybe I’m reading too much into it but it broke my heart a little to hear the man say, “Doesn’t anyone else care? It’s just a spectacle to you? It’s just funny?” and then let out this insane laugh. Then he says, “Let the police cut off my balls? I don’t mind because it’s the cops and they’re always right?”

What happened to this man? What is this deeply rooted mistrust of police? Is it based on a past experience? A bad experience? What exactly are we watching here?

I can’t help but think of another videotaped man of rage: Robert Dziekański at the Vancouver airport.

“Robert Dziekański tasered by the RCMP” (14 October, 2007)

For this Polish immigrant, a freakout cost him his life. After a fifteen hour journey, he was kept by customs for ten hours, unable to speak with anyone (a translator was never provided). His mother, who was waiting to welcome her son to Canada, left the airport thinking he’d missed his flight. For whatever reason, he suddenly lost it and was tased to death.

Here are a few words from the transcript of the video:

“Dziekanski is pinned on the ground by four RCMP officers. He struggles, kicking his feet.

(Off Camera) It’s sad.
(O.C.) How is he still fighting them off?
(O.C.) He is still freaking out.
(O.C.) Nobody knows why.
(O.C.) He speaks Russian.
(O.C.) No rhyme or reason.
(O.C.) Prime footage for my home videos.”

- Jowita Bydlowska

Aerosmith, “I’m Down” (1988)

There’s a million good reasons why musicians do cover versions, ranging from the commercial to the aesthetic to the practical. A band might want to display their influences, might be pushed by a record label to piggyback off another band’s success or simply need to beef out their live set.

When bands get to certain level of influence they are able to record whole albums of cover tunes, something we’ve seen from artists as disparate as Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Slayer, Metallica, Rush, Tori Amos (more on her later), Overkill, Peter Gabriel, Scarlett Johansson (!), and Rod Stewart.

Often the best cover versions come when a band offers a radical reinterpretation of the song in question, pulls it from one musical genre to another. Should you find the Black Sabbath boxed set, titled appropriately enough, “Black Box,” the bonus dvd contains footage of a very young Black Sabbath cranking out “Blue Suede Shoes.” Who knew that Black Sabbath had any boogie in them?

Cake’s version of “I Will Survive” works precisely because the style of music goes against the song. While Gloria Gaynor sang her little heart out, as they say, on the original, John McCrea’s laconic vocals make it sound like he could barely survive dropping his ice cream much less having his heart stomped on.

Cake, “I Will Survive” (2004)

Sometimes the cover even becomes the definitive version. One thinks of The Who’s thunderous version of “Summertime Blues” or Sid Vicious’ doing “My Way.” And only the most devoted Dylan chauvinist would think that the original of “All Along the Watchtower” surpasses Jimi Hendrix’s take on the song.

As a lifelong listener of heavy metal, I’ve often noticed how well metal bands do covers from outside of their musical sphere. Many songs have been given the metal treatment, the contrast between the original and the reinterpretation made all the more apparent through the shift in musical styles.

One thinks of Celtic Frost doing “Mexican Radio” or Anthrax doing “Got the Time” or Exodus doing “Pump it Up” or Marilyn Manson’s various takes on 1980s synth rock. Or Nazareth’s thumping version of Joni Mitchell’s “This Flight Tonight.” Or Megadeth’s blistering take on “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”

As an example, I offer that when Joan Baez wrote “Diamonds and Rust” I’m pretty sure she never envisioned it sounding like this:

Judas Priest, “Diamonds and Rust” (1982)

Personally, I am pissed that Velvet Revolver split up. They were a) a far more viable band than Axl Rose’s solo efforts under the G’N’R name and b) the last bastion of sleaze rock out here. And do we ever need more of that! Their second album “Libertad” was brilliant (funny enough the only false moment on it was a cover of ELO’s “Can’t Get it Out of My Head” but I don’t think any band could save that song). In their early going they did covers to flesh out their live set including “Psycho Killer.”

Velvet Revolver, “Psycho Killer” (Download Festival, 2006)

Not only does this version have some serious swing and swagger, something not associated with the art rock darlings The Talking Heads, it shows off a side of Slash’s guitar playing that is not often seen–that is his ability with a slide, an underused implement for contemporary six-stringers.

Leave it to a metal/funk/rock/tribal/classical band like Faith No More (amazing as it is to recall but there was a time around 1989 where it seemed that this was going to be the band of 1990s, but then Nirvana came along) to resurrect this chestnut from the 1970s disco-prog group Sparks, allowing Mike Patton to show off his little-used falsetto:

Faith No More, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” (1998)

While hard rock and metal bands have pulled songs into their fold, rarely does the favour flow in the other direction except in novelty form, like Dread Zeppelin (reggae covers of Led Zeppelin sung by an Elvis Presley impersonator), Apocolyptica (Finnish chamber quartet doing Metallica) or Hayseed Dixie (AC/DC done as bluegrass).

An exception is Tori Amos. A prolific cover artist, the chanteuse has released a full album of them, an EP, and participated in numerous tribute records, recording everyone from The Smiths to the Rolling Stones to the Boomtown Rats to Neil Young to Nirvana to Leonard Cohen. Here is some grainy footage of her transforming Slayer’s “Raining Blood,” the punishing closer to 1986’s “Reign in Blood,” into a dirge:

Tori Amos, “Raining Blood” (2006)

Needless to say, it is considerably slower than the original; it is in fact more than twice as long. It’s also worth noting that for a singer whose audience is largely women and is as invested in covers as she is, she has never (to my knowledge) recorded a song by another female artist.

Sometimes things just come right out of left field. According to their website the Scala Choir from Belgium is composed of 60 teenage girls under the direction of the brothers Steven and Stijn Kolacny. Starting out as a classical choir, they switched to singing pop artists like U2, Nirvana, Depeche Mode, Rammstein, and Radiohead, among others. Somewhere along the line, an inspired choice of musical programming led to a cover of the DiVinyls:

Scala & Kolacny Brothers, “I Touch Myself” (from album “Dream On,” 2004)

This is so wrong on so many levels (and if I have to explain what they are, get some help perv) and yet so funny. The difference between simply listening to this (which would be hilarious enough) and watching it, comes down to the choirmaster who comes off as just a little too… enthusiastic about the whole proceedings as far as I’m concerned.

Slang vocabulary can be a tricky thing. It constantly updates itself and failure to keep current can lead to many an embarrassing misunderstanding. I had never seen such an embarrassment set to music until I discovered this:

Gail and Dale, “One Toke Over the Line” (1971)

I should mention that this episode of Lawrence Welk aired in 1971, right on the heels of the release of Brewer and Shipley’s hippie folk drug anthem. Presumably, all the references to Mary and Jesus were behind the idea to do this song as an evangelical spiritual. Unfortunately, there was no Google search around to help them figure out what a toke was. I’m certain that these two fresh-faced youngsters never had one toke period, much less gone one over the line.

Looking back on it from this day and age, what I love about this version is that it is performed utterly, completely and truly without a hint of irony. Its unintentional humour is a result of Gail and Dale’s (wonder what they’re up to?) totally sincere earnestness. Watching and enjoying it in 2010 is absolutely another matter though.

- Christopher Doda

1) The Deeper I Go The More I’m Turning Blue

Deep sea expeditions in the Gulf of Mexico by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have revealed a highly diverse habitat that is—in their words— “akin to combining a tropical rainforest with a desert in bloom.” It looks a little like this:

Greg MacGillivray, “IMAX Coral Reef Adventure” (2003)

The Gulf is not only colorful and mysterious: it offers up more finfish, shrimp and shellfish annually than the south and mid-Atlantic, Chesapeake and New England areas combined, and is home to 400 species of shells. In fact, the US Environmental Protection Agency says it has the best shelling beaches in North America.

2) She Might Have Loved Him Once But That Was Long Ago

Oh, but wait a second. That was 2003. These days you may want to do your shelling elsewhere.

Pelicans on Grande Terre Island, Gulf of Mexico (May, 2010)

Deepwater Horizon, the British Petroleum off-shore drilling rig that exploded on April 20, killing eleven men, to this day hasn’t stopped pumping oil into the Gulf.

Pelicans are not the only creatures bearing the consequences. The entire ecosystem is in peril, from tubeworms to endangered Western Bluefin Tuna. And don’t forget about the men and women in the Gulf tourist and seafood industries.

3) Who’s to Blame? I Haven’t Drawn a Conclusion

The recipient of the world’s rage has been British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward. This month’s Ryeberg playlist had to include a compilation of his obfuscations during testimony to the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations.

Ben Craw, “Tony Hayward Testifying” (June 17, 2010)

4) This Is What’s Called The Liberal Tactic

British Petroleum is now facing countless lawsuits. Time to hire a team of equally evasive Nathan Thurms.

Martin Short as Nathan Thurm, Defense Lawyer for Big Oil Inc.

5) “God Keep Our Land, Glorious and Free”

Meanwhile, with the Gulf thickening, G20 leaders wined and dined in downtown Toronto. The Harper Government spent over a billion dollars to make sure it was a good party for invited guests and rather unpleasant for citizens out in the street.

A few Canadians, unaccustomed to police barricades, sang the national anthem—ironically—to little effect.

Queen Street West during the Toronto G20 Summit (June, 2010)

6) Under Pretext Of Public Utility

Police searched, arrested and detained over a thousand protestors and bystanders—illegally and unconstitutionally according to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association—while not seeming to pay much heed to the anarchists who were smashing up store windows and burning mysteriously abandoned police cruisers.

There is suspicion here and there that the first people to attack the police cruisers were agents provocateurs, à la Montebello, there to get people to take the bait. Is the young guy who casually smashes Cruiser 766 an everyday moron or an undercover cop working with the police? His lame anarchist costume and lackluster “Yeah! Fuckin’ A” would suggest that he’s the latter.

Perhaps this is paranoia, and the squad cars got themselves into the wrong place at the wrong time. In which case some officers were in for a very firm slap on the wrist!

One thing’s for sure, the burning cars made for spectacular photos. In an interview with Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein argues (as do others) that the cars were welcome “media props” to justify the enormous expense of summit security (cheeky French President Sarkozy said during a press conference that next year’s G20 summit in Nice would cost ten times less than Toronto’s).

7) But The Earth Is Still Going Round The Sun

Let it be admitted, a police car is a tantalizing target for any young person. Or dog.

8) Ear To The Ground

This month, Ryeberg welcomed new curator Christopher Doda. His first curated video features a few cover songs. Here’s one more: a very fine Tom Waits number in the mouth of Scarlett Johansson.

Scarlett Johansson, “Falling Down” (from “Big Time,” 1987)

9) Never Stop The Dreaming

Over in South Africa, big men have been falling down left and right. The World Cup has seen early exits for les Bleus, the Azzurri, Bafana Bafana and every other African team excepting Ghana.

And England? When the Cup kicked off, Englishmen the world over thought this might be their year, now with no-nonsense master tactician Fabio Capello at the helm. After all the oh-so nears, would it finally come home?

The Squad, “Three Lions 2010”

Um… no. Germany thrashed England in the Round of 16: 4 — 1. “If The Few had defended as badly as England we’d all be speaking German now,” said the Daily Mail. Woeful, dire, failure, rout, said the other papers.

As in the past, England were victims of cruel injustice when a legitimate goal was not given. The three men in the world who did not see Lampard’s shot cross the line, namely the Uruguayan match referees, were promptly sent packing by FIFA. Sepp Blatter apologized. All too little too late. England were robbed once again! Of a 4 — 2 defeat.

10) Anyone For Tennis?

Crestfallen England fans could distract themselves with their very own tennis tournament. A slightly unusual one this year: For the first time in eight years, Roger Federer will not be gliding onto Wimbledon Centre Court for the final. He lost to Thomas Berdych in the quarters.

Well, he’s a man, and a man can lose his composure.

Pedro Pinto with Roger Federer (2009)

Dear Dockers,

You ran an ad on television during the Superbowl this year showing a bunch of pantsless men running through a field chanting, “I wear, I wear, I wear no pants!” At the end, you see a guy in khakis and a voice-over proclaims: “Calling all men: It’s time to wear the pants.”

How clever, I thought at the time, an ad playing on that old idea that “men wear the pants.” I’ll admit, it was kind of cute.

Dockers, “Men Without Pants” (2010)

But then you ruined it, Dockers. You followed up with a print campaign on the same theme that took it in a wrong direction. I copied this down from the streetcar shelter near my apartment a couple weeks ago:

“Once upon a time, men wore the pants, and wore them well. Women rarely had to open doors and little old ladies never crossed the street alone. Men took charge because that’s what they did. But somewhere along the way, the world decided it no longer needed men. Disco by disco, latte by foamy non-fat latte, men were stripped of their khakis and left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny. But today, there are questions our genderless society has no answers for. The world sits idly by as cities crumble, children misbehave and those little old ladies remain on one side of the street. For the first time since bad guys, we need heroes. We need grown-ups. We need men to put down the plastic fork, step away from the salad bar and untie the world from the tracks of complacency. It’s time to get your hands dirty. It’s time to answer the call of manhood. It’s time to WEAR THE PANTS.”

First of all, I’ll admit it’s catchy and you actually had me for a minute there. People should be more respectful of the elderly. Yes! People should be courteous and hold doors open for each other. Yes! It is even true – as I’ve personally heard many young women insist – that men need to step up their game again, turn off the XBox, engage with the world around them, and make decisions. But Dockers, then we come to your vague and completely unexplained attack on androgyny and what you call the “genderless society.”

Here we’ve spent decades getting to the point where people are starting to feel comfortable about the specific point on the vast gray area of identity that they occupy and in your small way, Dockers, you are trying to undo that.

Men and women – and those outside and in between – have, more and more, been encouraged to behave and dress as they please. Or, as I believe philosopher Judith Butler would put it, be the artist of their own gender performance. People are generally happier and more loving people when they are free to do this without criticism.

I have no scientific evidence for that claim, but Dockers, doesn’t it ring true? If a culture accepts and loves you for who you are, doesn’t it make sense it would breed the same in return? Cities and families crumble because of narrow-mindedness, Dockers.

Way back in 1984, Paul Westerberg wrote a song called “Androgynous” for his album “Let It Be.” The song was covered by the Crash Test Dummies in 1991 for “The Ghosts That Haunt Me,” the first tape I ever bought. As I explored my sexuality and navigated the treacherous path of what kind of person I would become, this song about the flexibility of gender expression made me believe I had limitless choices and that it was all okay.

Crash Test Dummies, “Androgynous” (1991)

I love in particular the lines of reassurance to the kids who dared push the gender boundaries, some of whom, in the state where I am from, were beat up or even killed for it:

Mirror image, see no damage, see no evil at all
Kewpie dolls and urine stalls will be laughed at
The way you’re laughed at now

And Dockers, notice at the end of the song – if I’m understanding it correctly – Westerberg reverses it so that the guy, Dick, is wearing pants again and Jane is wearing a dress. Naturally, some women – most, probably – will want to wear dresses and some men will want to wear pants. In other words, a lot of people will choose to be feminine or masculine in traditional ways.

Dockers, I am concerned. I found a number of follow-ups of your original commercial on YouTube, more than one of them involving children intrigued by the ad.

JEDiJAWA360, “Alistair wears no pants!” (2010)

I’m not saying this kid has any idea what sort of propaganda he’s learning from your campaign, but Dockers, that’s exactly the problem. I know you need to come up with clever, provocative ads to sell your product – in my own way, I do the same thing all the time – but you have a responsibility to do it conscious of the fact that you are, as a side effect, educating children.

Joan Jett covered “Androgynous” four years ago. In the video to the song, Jett is teaching a bunch of schoolchildren that love can exist between two people comfortable with who they are, no matter how they dress, or act.

Joan Jett, “Androgynous” (2006)

Dockers, after watching that don’t you feel ashamed? Do you still want to make a lot of good people feel bad about themselves?

Dockers, I have to cut this letter off now – I’m about to head out to the disco. But I want to make sure I’ve made my feelings clear:

I think your ad campaign is a piece of shit.

Sincerely,

- Micah Toub