“None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is…She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20 year-old Ibiza disco. She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic. She sounds more like me than I f***ing do! That’s a talent…but she’s the industry’s last stab at making itself important.” (via @NMEMagazine)

M.I.A. produces great commentary about the controversial pop-star (personally, one of the most accurate statements I’ve read about the Gaga craze).  The weight of her argument is lost coming from an artist who isn’t practicing what she is preaching in her interview with NME.   Lady Gaga is the current queen of pop music – she’s putting vulgar, eccentric spins on playing the pop musician game and daring to be a  “out there” while she continues to remain in the top 10 itunes downloads amongst Justin Beiber (mass produced as though he was a Gap sweater), B.o.B. (Kid Cudi, say what?), and the Black Eye Peas (I’m not even going down the road of how Fergie ruined the Black Eyed Peas).

There has to be a line of distinction drawn between the expectations of pop artists and the rest of the music world.  That distinction must be factored into the criticism we give pop artists (or in this case, artists give to each other).  There has to be recognition that pop music is “pop performing TO music” now.  You can’t go to a Britney Spears concert and get pissed off that she is lip syncing – are you there for the music or are you there for the spectacle?   If you’re there for the music, save yourself $65 and download the CD on itunes and have a dance party in your living room.

Pop music has made strides since the Britney Spears/Band Boy Era where agents, managers and record companies were finding groups that could fit into a mold that they knew they could market.  When Lou Pearlman cooked up the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC in the 1990s, he saw a hole in the industry that had been vacant since the New Kids On the Block and he recognized the money potential he could make by molding bands to fit that the NKOTB model.  This was a business decision – making money on the teenage market by producing bands, not by bands producing music.   (Boy bands extend further back than the 1980s, but the structure of the pop music scene has evolved so much since the Beatles and the Bee Gees, the definition of “boy bands” evolved as well – so I use the New Kids On the Block as a reference point of when this definition changed).   We all know this about the pop music scene, but we can’t accept it. We still critique these artists for not being original.  One lesson that can be learned about today’s pop music industry is you don’t have to be original anymore to succeed in this sector of music – and we’ve done this as fans by continuing to support this “unoriginality”.  Pop music is it’s own genre with it’s own rules that these artists need to play by.

Lady Gaga does a good job distinguishing herself from the rest of the current female pop stars.  I think every eccentric female performer could admit to ripping off Madonna (or perhaps putting a modern spin on what Madonna did in the 1980s).  Madonna WAS a culture icon, she’s not really doing anything worth noting these days, but in the height of her popularity she was the female musician that emerged with originality on the pop music scene and not many after her have made that type of impact.  Perhaps Gaga is just trying to pick up where Madonna left off now that she’s aged – maybe that’s her whole shtick – a modern Madonna – I have to say, it seems like this “shtick” is working as far as being a successful pop artist.

It’s going to be interesting to see how M.I.A.’s music career develops in next year now that she’s coming out of the woodwork after a year of maternity hiding.  I wonder if she’ll become a pop music sensation (a Blockbuster movie of the music industry like Lady Gaga) and this is her way to challenge the current queen.

I’d love to see M.I.A. go fully pop and duke it out with the Gaga.  I hope Gaga has an upcoming magazine interview where she rebuttals.  My money would have been on M.I.A. until the recent article in NME (to be fair, I hold my musicians to character standards – which is probably wrong), so for now more power to you, Lady Gaga, and enjoy your current reign as the Lady of Pop but M.I.A. if you’re putting up your fists – LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

“Wayne has a job. They got him on suicide watch for other prisoners. He watches the crazy prisoners and makes sure they don’t kill themselves. He likes the job even though they don’t pay him much.”  — Antonia “Toya” Johnson, Lil Wayne’s ex-wife, talking about how the rap star is spending his prison time and forcing us to consider a life in which Lil Wayne is the only thing standing between us and suicide. (via Us magazine)

Twinkies are the brainchild of James A. Dewar, one of Continental’s bakers. Realizing that several machines used to make cream-filled strawberry shortcake sat idle when strawberries were out of season, Dewar conceived a snack cake filled with banana cream, which would be dubbed the Twinkie. During World War II, bananas were rationed and Hostess was forced to switch to vanilla cream. This change proved so popular that Hostess never switched back to banana and still uses vanilla cream in Twinkies today. The Twinkie was invented in Schiller Park, Illinois about 1930.

@Benjamin__Linus: I like bunnies

@ConanOBrien: I just celebrated the end of Lent by eating 22 sleeves of Peeps. My religion rocks!

@jesus: Don’t call it a comeback.

* = My personal wish list

*AC/DC – Back In Black
Aerosmith – Toys In The Attic
*Allman Brothers Band – Eat A Peach
Arcade Fire – Funeral
Band – The Band
Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Beastie Boys – Hello Nasty
Bee Gees – Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Blind Faith – Blind Faith
*Bob Dylan – Blood On the Tracks
Bob Dylan And The Band – The Basement Tapes
Bob Seger – Against The Wind
Boston – Boston
Brian Eno – Before And After Science
Chicago Transit Authority
*Clash – London Calling
*Credence Clearwater Rivival – Green River
Curtis Mayfield – Superfly SDTK
David Bowie – Scary Monsters
David Bowie – Hunky Dory
David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust
Elvis Costello – This Year’s Model
Devo – Freedom of Choice
*Doors – The Doors
Duran Duran – Rio
Eagles – Hotel California
Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Eric Clapton – 461 Ocean Blvd
fIREHOSE – flyin’ the flannel
Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
Frank Zappa – Aposrophe
Frank Zappa – Hot Rats
Genesis – The Lambs Lie Down On Broadway
Grateful Dead – American Beauty
*Guns & Roses – Appetite For Destruction
Hall & Oates – Private Eyes
Huey Lewis And The News – Sports
Jane’s Addiction – Ritual de Lo Habitual
Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced?
Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland
John Lennon – Plastic Ono Band
Jonathon Richmond and The Modern Lovers – The Modern Lovers
Journey – Escape
KISS – Alive II
King Crimson – Larks’ Tongues In Aspic
*Led Zeppelin – I
Led Zeppelin – IV
Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man
LOVE – Forever Changes
Manu Chao – Clandestino
Medeski Martin & Wood – Shack Man
Metallica – Master Of Puppets
*MGMT – Oracle Spectacular
*Michael Jackson – Thiller
Michael McDonald – If That’s What It Takes
Miles Davis – A Tribute To Jack Johnson
Minutemen – Double Nickels On The Dime
Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night
Nirvana – Nevermind
Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
*Pearl Jam – Ten
Peter Gabriel – So
Pink Floyd – Meddle
Pink Floyd – The Wall
Pixies – Come On Pilgrim
Police – Ghost In The Machine
Pork Tornado – Pork Tornado
Primus – Sailing The Seas Of Cheese
Prince – Purple Rain
*Queen – A Night At The Opera
*Radiohead – Kid A
Rage Against The Machine – Evil Empire
Ramones – Ramones
Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
*Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street
*Roots – Phronology
Rush – Moving Pictures
Springsteen – Born To Run
Steely Dan – Pretzel Logic
T.Rex – Electric Warrior
Talking Heads – Fear Of Music
Television – Marquee Moon
Tom Petty – Damn The Torpedoes
Tom Waits – Rain Dogs
U2 – Joshua Tree
*Van Halen – Van Halen
Van Morrison – Astral Weeks
Velvet Underground And Nico
Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes
Ween – White Pepper
White Stripes – Elephant
Who – Who’s Next
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
X – Los Angeles
*Yes – The Yes Album
ZZ Top – Tres Hombes

Please let me know if you see any corrections or changes, and sound off with your guesses, hopes and dreams!

Last summer my gentlemen friend insisted that I get a mass removed from the lower nape of my neck.  The mass wound up being a sebaceous cyst the size of a golf ball.  My office is located in the Northwestern Memorial Hospital building, so I was able to schedule the appointment during my lunch break.  I was given  local anesthesia around the area of the cyst to numb the skin.  Low and behold, the cyst turned out being golf ball sized!  Here are the pictures:

This last surgery was similar because I was only required to have local anesthesia.  I did, however, have to have the procedure done at the Outpatient Surgery wing of Northwestern Memorial Hospital.  The same surgeon chopped me up – this time at the hospital because the bumps were in a more sensitive area.  The larger mass on the left side came from a fatty bubble on top of my left thigh.  The smaller mass was a dried up mole thing  under my left armpit.

I get the stitches out this week.  I look like Frankenali.