Britney as Muse vs. Britney as Machine Vehicle Thing

So Britney Spears will be in Chicago July 8th. Perhaps I will have my first actual expereince seeing her in concert. It's not like I haven't actually seen footage of her live shows on every single tour. The intenet is an amazing place; people post entire shows on their cell phones, from every angle. But what I'm talking about is less about seeing her live and more about me actually being able to film people in the parking lot to do a Britney Spears Parking Lot. Or maybe nobody cares about her anymore. OK, all eight people following this blog! Anybody wants to come with me, here's the info!:

Britney Spears Announces North American Summer Tour - BRITNEY SPEARS: "July 8 Chicago, IL United Center"

Does she ever take any time off? In a recent book I read about her the author was talking about how maybe the reason she seems to be touring so much on the last couple albums is because peraps she's under a tough love contract with her record label. Or maybe she's making up for lost time for not touring during the Blackout period,. I love that it's  the name of the album is Blackout because then one can say "the Blackout Period" which is totally fitting for that era of her career, her meltdowny era.

Is Britney perhaps not relevant anymore? I read a review of her new album in the Onion and they were saying something to the efect like the review I was talking about in my last blog entry, that it's an entity that is the name of Britney Spears recording under that name -- although in the Onion they were slightly more complimentary (I guess) and said that she was more of a muse for other song writers to write for, and she's more of a catalyst-vehicle thing for new songwriters to get their work out there -- it's like she's one big commercial for other people, which totally makes sense if you watch any of her videos for the last album or two or three where a lot of the videos have tons of sponsorship deals. I think in either the NY Popcast review or the Onion review they were talking about how in an era of Lady Gaga, Kei$ha and Katy Perry (women songwrites writing for other people or recording their own self-written songs) perhaps Britney is not part of that group of female song writers -- making her in some way less relevant. Is relevant really the right word?

Anyway, last night I watched Brit's new video for Till the World Ends. Joe peeked in while I was watching it. I said that it reminded me of the Slave 4 U video, all sweaty and people dancing in a sort of moody gritty scenario. Joe said that it reminded him of the second Matrix movie, which I agreed.

Also! I saw Britney's 25 Things You Should Know About Me or whatever in Star or US or one of those magazines, and the most important thing that stood out for me was that she crashed her mom's Lexus in high school.

Her mom drove a Lexus when Britney was growing up? I am surprised because I know growing up they were pretty poor. For some reason I picture it like Nutbush City Limits by Tina Turner. Preposterous of me, I know.

Also, the fact that I have even thought about this is pretty preposterous. What can I say? I'm a walking Twitter feed. Or something.

Is there such a thing as hooking up soemthing to just record your thoughts without you having to actually articulate them? Because that's what I need. Like a mental articulation intern. A thought voice mail. Single celled one degree no-work recording. Bee boop robot. Smart phone.

And hey! One of my favoritest high weirdness distributors Last Gasp (in San Francisco) was selling my zine And now they're sold out, as I see from their website. My contact there told me that there was a lot of chaos when Britney doing a TV appearance there and my zine apparently captured a zeitgeistyness of the moment. They ordered more but by that point I was down to only a few. Aw shucks.

I sent some zines to Australia because Luke at Sticky had contributed to my indiegogo campaign to print Caboose #7 and to send 20 copies of it cost me $75! What the hell, United States Postal Service?! I should just take a damn vacation there myself. Maybe take some digiridoo lessons. And learn how to spell digireedoo. On a dirgible. Or whatever.

The World's Saddest Britney Spears Album Release Listening Event in the Whole Wide World

So I just got home from the world's saddest Britney Spears Femme Fatale listening party at a local movie theater. Was this put together at the last minute? Some ads said it started at 6pm, some said 8pm. I got there at 5:40. I even parked far away so I wouldn't have to pay street parking. I walked in and they told me to come back at 6. I think I actually got there before some of the people who were working the thing. So I went to Fantasy Headquarters and looked at halloween costumes. I went to an ATM at a Walgreen's and took out some cash. I went to the dollar store (meant to buy toothpaste, forgot by the time I left).  At 6pm when I came back and I walked in and some guy ran up to me and goes, "Can I help you?" And I said, "Um, I'm here for the thing that's going on tonight." He said, "Oh, we're opening in about 10 minutes, you can go wait over there." So I went and waited over there. "Over there" was in a corner with a table and a copy of the Illinois Entertainer. I thought, "Hmm, maybe I can see what U2 cover bands are playing out in the suburbs." Or "Perhaps I can see if Huey Lewis will be playing at the Horseshoe Casino soon." A young guy with a fancy video camera was walking around so I asked him what he was filming for. He told me he was hired by the people running the event to film it, having answered a Craig's List ad from the day before. We talked about Britney a little, and he wasn't really into her the way I was -- he was there because it was a filming gig. Then I noticed some people sitting at a table with microphones in the lobby, one being an obese gentleman, and he was surrounded by a couple other nondescript people, and one other person who kind of looked like they were maybe high school age or a little older with a Manic Panicy orangey fuscia-y mohawk thing which I thought was adorable and cute and totally precious, and I have no idea if that was a boy or girl or somewhere in-between. I have no idea what they were talking about. I wandered up to the table where there were some Britney-related things, namely some of her scents. They weren't for sale (I already owned some of them anyway). They were on display as part of the raffle. I talked to the young girl sitting at the table. Her mom worked at the concession stand so apparently she got suckered into working this event. We talked about what she planned to do for her spring break, which was soon, and she seemed to think sleeping was a good way to spend it, which sounded good to me. At some point I just kind of maneuvered away form "over there" into the concession area and ordered popcorn and soda and told the lady there that her daughter seemed very nice.  The popcorn was delicious. I decided to Tweet that the popcorn at the Britney Spears Femme Fatale Release Event was delicious. In fact, I decided that I was going to do a live Twitter feed of my experience at the event, which seemed like a good idea until my friends Stefanie and Sarah got there, who I am sure did not appreciate my constant face up all in my smart phone, but I couldn't resist. They had a little red carpet-y area up in the concession stand foyer that had that advertisingy background you always see behind the celebs at press junkets with logos, and this background thing had a bunch of logos of Sony and Zomba/Jive (Britney's record people) and whatever else. I demanded my friends take pictures of me in front of it with my popcorn bag and soda looking as frumpy as possible, and the more disgusting I tried to myself look the funnier the picture was. When I get the pictures off my camera, the next time I load them in, I should probably post one of those pictures because it was pretty preposterous.

As we were waiting the Cougars played, and the leathery Cougar ladies played covers of songs from Cheap Trick, the Ramones, Joan Jett and the like. It was cheesy, but we were entranced in watching the audience, all 23 people (in a theater that hold about a 1000, as I overheard someone say earlier when I was waiting "over there.") One lady in the band looked a little bit like Seven Tyler and one lady looked a little bit like Richard Simmons but considerably shorter and kind of trannyish. I couldn't figure out why they were performing at a Britney Spears release event because they didn't play any actual Britney songs and they are not, on the surface anyway, everything Britney Spears is not: middle-aged women, rocking out, playing their own instruments. A huge Britney poster hung to the stage right, a photo obviously from the Femme Fatale album cover photo shoot. The stationary Britney poster -- there's something poetic here, but I'm not sure exactly what it is. Aging women next to a poster of Britney -- but a lot of the songs the Cougars covered were written by men, just as many of the songs Britney does are written/produced by men -- as if to say that women "rocking out" are still being pulled by strings of men  -- or something. I don't know. I decided to settle the issue once and for all by heading back out to the concession stand for Swedish Fish. I also went to the bathroom and saw that above the hand dryer was an ad for the Britney album.

After the Cougars, some local radio announcer got up on the stage and tried to get the audience to say "Britney Britney Britney" over and over which got really tiresome, especially since there were so few people in the theater. Then he tried to get the audience to call and response the spelling of her name but he spelled it wrong with 2 T's. It's not fucking Brittney. It's Britney, bitch. And! The audience participation thing gets old really quick. I HATE IT. That shit should be outlawed. I will not be told when to clap and shout stupid shit or sing along. I and I alone will decide when to clap and shout stupid shit or sing along. Then he wanted to work with the impersonator on some moves and asked for some music and they put on Sometimes, which is a cheesy almost sort of ballad thing, not the easiest thing to dance to, and he tried doing that Russian slavic dance where you squat down and kick your legs out, and  it was so awkward, and everybody felt really embarrassed for him too.

Then they had some model come out and they showed a preview of a cheesy horror movie she's in and play some dance song she recorded, while we watched a screen saver on the movie screen. Then they had a Britney impersonator come and do a montage of Britney songs, which was OK except that the moves seemed a little languid and like s(h)e didn't have very much actual choreographed moves. I did recognize some of the moves as being from certain videos and live Britney performances. The lip syncing wasn't great but whatever. Then the performer was hanging around and I neglected to get my picture taken with them but oh well. That's what Photoshop is for.

Then the DJ guy came back and tried to get the Britney call and response thing started back up again and he was awful. Like it was someone's dorky dad.

Then another model actress person came out and talked about her fragrance she's launching. And then the obese man came up and talked about his internet radio station.

Well I'm beat so I will have to leave you on a cliff hanger about what happened next because i have to go to bed. I'm sure you're devastated by that news.

BORING BORING BORING!!!!!!!

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I Am a Sucker For the Pop Star Bildungsroman

This is how I spent my afternoon. It was dark when I came out of the theater. Winter sucks.

It's opening week for Burlesque, the Christina Aguilera/Cher vehicle. I saw it today with my movie club, a group of friends that get together to watch movies that pop stars make (which got started with watching Cool As Ice, the Vanilla Ice movie). The trick is that the movie only qualifies if it was made after the pop star got famous. I was interested to see how Burlesque fit into the recent model of the genre, if you want to call it a genre.

It seems to me that it used to be that pop star movies were all about the protagonist already being famous but having to deal with that fame, such as Rick Springfield's 1984 movie Hard to Hold, the madcap musical adventures of the Spice Girls in Spice World (which was pretty much the Spice Girls in A Hard Day's Night), or maybe you might make a case for Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan. Or sometimes pop stars were in biopics of someone else (Madonna in Evita or maybe you might make a case for J-Lo in Selena -- although that was more of a breakout role for her, so I don't know if that movie qualifies). Sometimes pop stars make a ridiculous movie of the genre I enjoy with my friends like Mariah Carey in Glitter but then almost disappointingly they go on to make a film where they actually are pretty good, like Mariah Carey was in Precious (or so I am told; I haven't actually seen Precious).


Most of the above mentioned movies with pop stars are not quite the same as the movies with pop stars with the Hollywood bildungsroman story arc, which are the ones I like the best. They usually document a naive yet spunky and talented youth, who ends up leaving the small town to "make it" in the big city. We watch them clumb up from rags to riches on a journey into success and fame, sometimes paying some sort of price for their sacrifices. The specific ways in which these plot developments unfold may differ, but those certain conventions are usually present. Usually the protagonist has had a sad upbringing, and is usually impoverished and troubled (Glitter or Burlesque). You usually see early on that they have some kind of raw and untrained talent: Britney Spears sang to Madonna albums in her bedroom in Crossroads so that viewers understand she knows how to sing, Christina Aguilera sang along with some sassy tune cleaning up after hours at work so the audience understands that she has higher aspirations than waiting on tables, and so on. There's always some defining moment where the protagonist uses their pluckiness to show their talent to the right person who makes the big decisions, proving they've "got what it takes," and they're given a chance to prove themselves; maybe the usual performer at the bar is sick and the protagonist jumps at the chance to strut their stuff (Burlesque).

The end of the movie will have some payoff, whether it's reconciling with foes (Purple Rain), saving-the-bar against uncertain demolition (Burlesque), bravely standing up to one's elders (Crossroads), etc. Although I have never actually seen Eminem's 8 Mile, there is no doubt in my mind that there's some you've-got-one-chance to-prove-yourself-by-rapping-in-front-of-a-massive-audience finale scene.

Also, I am always interested in seeing how the careers of Britney and Xtina parallel, since they are pretty much each other's peers going back to MMC. (And then also with Justin Timberlake -- does Britney ever feel he's the one that got away?) Anyway, I could't help when I saw this picture of Xtina in Burlesque, think of Britney in the video for "Circus." If you look at the pictures, I think you'll see what I mean.

Christina in Burlesque.

Britney in Circus.

So people are all into the old-timey stuff these days, which I quite like. I heard that Xtina's most recent album Bionic didn't do so well (they tried to Lady Gaga her up with being kind of like a crazy fashionista weirdo thing which is not her style, and then they also tried to do all that mechanical steampunky android science-fiction stuff with her, and of course that didn't work either because that's also not her style too) -- and I'm told that it was all kind of disasterous for her. Or at least that's what I inferred from the the way they talked about it on Sound Opinions. The truth is that I haven't even heard anything on the Bionic album, at least not knowingly. Maybe I'll go scope it out just out of curiosity.

I did hear someone speculate that Burlesque was supposed to be an attempt to revive Xtina's career, which is interesting, because it actually seems a bit late for a pop star like her to making this type of movie in her career, it being such that when pop stars make those movies with the rags to riches get famous movies, it's usually after just a couple albums. Or maybe I'm only thinking of the fact that Britney Spears made her version of the pop-star-story movie Crossroads eight years ago, and both Xtina and Brit are pretty much peers. On the other hand, Crossroads was hardly a movie with the same type of dancing and singing that was featured so heartily in Burlesque.

All this is to say that I was almost disappointed that I kind of liked the movie even though it was strangely saccharine for a movie that was so sexy. Also, there was of course some cringeworthy stuff as you would expect -- one scene I am thinking of specifically is one in which Cher performs a ballad lamenting the potential loss of her dear burlesque club, that was pretty er, well let's just say it was The Greatest Love of All fed through a St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion) processor. And the scene was almost gratuitously emotional the way the camera falls on the DJ's resigned sigh as he turns off the stereo at the end of the song with a pensive nod of sympathy. I did actually burst out laughing. So there was that. But the singing and dancing scenes were actually pretty amazing.