The population of Georgia had the right idea. Now only if us in the online culture “journalism” (LOL1985) business could equally go up to those in the field who weren’t pulling their weight, just making the quality of life worse for all involved, and go “Here… would you awfully mind fucking the hell off? Before we kill you? With guns? That’d be great”.
First things first, though: the funniest thing anyone ever said to me was when I mentioned to a guy called James that Albert Camus had been quite a good footballer, and made the Algerian World Cup qualifying squad on a number of occasions. His response: “Well, truth is “stranger” than fiction”.
Brilliant. Nearly as good as the joke about the guy whose wife miscarries on April 1st.
Anyway, yeah. Music writing has plumbed new depths with this piece of cockmuppetry: http://www.thestranger.com/current/feature.html. I have no pissing clue who The Stranger are, or what their schtick is, a quick skim around the website seems to suggest the kids who I spent all my time at university throwing bottles of piss from windows at as they made their way to the debating society (“This house believes that u r teh gay”). I mean… oh boy. Wanna go giggle-giggle ker-razy?
“English critics love to hate Martin Amis–and here’s why: because he’s so fucking talented.”
That’s a genuine quote from these guys! That’s some genius there. “English critics love to hate The Thrills because they’re so fucking talented”. “Police wish to speak to Lee Hughes, because he’s so fucking talented”. “I hate the assorted petsplits who make up the writing staff of The Stranger’s lead article this week because they’re so fucking talented”.
Student newspapers are full of a mixture of people who a) can’t write b) think they can write c) think “getting a reaction” is a substitute for good writing. So, what’s The Stranger’s big old jizzstain on the face of all that is good and holy then?
First the facts: Courtney Love is not dead.
OK, good, start off with a factual stand, first rule of journalism, your media studies teacher has obviously got through to you. Where we gonna go now?
Not physically, at least–though no one could blame you for checking the newswires to make sure.
Where we are going to go is downhill rapidly. It’s a brave man who combines overblown prose with a kind of “Simon Cowell just got the fastest lap time on Top Gear” smugness, but, dang it, David Schmader manages it!
Witnessing Love’s brazen downward spiral, no one could be blamed for bracing for the worst.
I mean… you see what I’m saying here? This is just the damn introductory piece, and it comes across like my mum’s copy of Family Circle or some other “ISSUES!!! AFFECTING YOU!!!” piece of cock magazine.
Anyway, I don’t hate you, so I won’t quote at length any more of Davey Boy’s writings (needless to say he uses the phrase “heroically tenacious”- EIGHT SYLLABLES! HE MUST BE A GOOD WRITER!), but the upshot of all his blabberings is that him and the assorted other rhesus monkeys that make up The Stranger have decided to write about Courtney Love as if she was dead!
Tip: if I went to Todd and said to him “How about we all write fifty six articles on Courtney Love as if she was dead, that’d be the interesting?”, he would probably come to my house and beat my father to death. Stick with Stylus kids, we listen to every microhouse album ever made so you don’t have to.
So, Schmuckder’s intro finally comes to its conclusion. What’s next on the menu? How about… an obituary! “A career eulogy from a former fan” it’s called! Sounds like a Guided By Voices album track LOL2020.
It’s “written” “by” someone called Hannah Levin, whose previous efforts include
articles entitled “New Country That Doesn’t Suck”, and “Dudes, Dicks, and Dildos”. As I was saying… I fucking hate student journalism.
Love used to have zillions of fan sites lovingly documenting her every move–now there are more of them devoted to hating her
Google’s directory (which I’m sure we can agree gives a decent slice of the internet) gives us 69 (LOLSEXLOL) Hole and Courtney fan sites, and 3 hate sites. Thanks for turning up Hannah, though, do stick around and offer some more crappy analysis.
Then Hannah spends the next ˝ of the article talking about herself. Nick Southall just messaged me saying “This is where you make a joke about Pitchfork”, but I don’t know what he means. Anyway, as you all know, obituaries feature lots of discussion about the obituary writer, especially if you’re someone behind such groundbreaking pieces of journalism as “New Country That Doesn’t Suck”, so, like my man Miles Lane, I’ll allow it.
Oh god… you wanna laugh? This made me laugh so much, my grandfather just asked me if I feel OK, and he’s been dead 22 years.
I’d entangle myself in relationships with bad men, drink too much, and listen to Guns N’ Roses and N.W.A. as often as I listened to Team Dresch and Bikini Kill.
I really don’t think I can say anything about that, being as I am rendered comatose by the amount I’ve just laughed at it. Hannah’s boyfriends be the baddest clique up on the scene. And I think we’re all getting bored with these fake-ass broads writing FUCKING AWFUL SELF-IMPORTANT BADLY RESEARCHED “CAN WE GET OUR PAGE LINKED TO AT SOME FAN FORUM SO WE CAN GET PEOPLE WRITING HATE MAIL TO US SO WE CAN FEEL IMPORTANT SO WE CAN VALIDATE OUR LIVES FOR ONCE IN OUR PISSY FUCKING EXISTENCE SO WE CAN GO OFF AND WRITE AN ARTICLE CALLED “New Country That Doesn’t Suck”?
Hannah Levin’s favorite Courtney moment was driving down Lake City Way ten days prior to Kurt Cobain’s death, listening to an advance copy of Live Through This and feeling confident that Kurt, Courtney, and Frances would be fine.
Oh, just fuck off already.
Anyway, what’s the next article?
THE HOLE STORY
Courtney Love’s Recorded Legacy, Assessed
by Hannah Levin
I really envy AIDS sufferers.
Anyway, you know exactly what this review is going to say before you’ve read it: I liked them before you, and Pretty On The Inside is a better album than Celebrity Skin which is POP. POP IS EVIL. I SHOOT IT WITH A GUN, NOT A CAMERA. Sample piece of top critical insight:
Live Through This
DGC, 1994
**** The timing of its release couldn’t have been poorer (less than a week after Kurt Cobain’s death), but the quality of its content couldn’t have been any better.
No, it could have, or else you’d have given it *****, you stupid woman.
alluding to critics who had dismissed her as a starfucking phony (”I want to be the girl with the most cake/I fake it so real I am beyond fake”)
That lyrics actually about the riot grrrl game of adding characteristics to cakes you’d baked, but, you know, actually reading a single Courtney Love interview from between 1993 and 1998 to find something as basic as that out would have been actual research, her? Ms Levin’s research seems to consist of looking in a mirror.
They continue with the other articles, some of which aren’t about Hannah Levin
and some woman called Courtney she read about in Seventeen once.
The coming years brought only disappointment in Love’s career on celluloid, most notably in the video for Celebrity Skin’s “Awful,” a wonderful song ruined by a concert video filled with images so mundane–screaming into a wind machine, crowd-surfing in slow motion–it made me wish Kurt had pulled a murder-suicide.
David Schmader wishes someone dead because they made a bad video. What a great person to work in the field of music criticism. Get the feeling the boy Schmader’s led someone of a sheltered life?
Actually, one of the best things about this is that Dave’s intro to the whole she-bang makes a big fuss of the fact that Courtney was “joking” about her overdose. MUST WE SLING THIS POP FILTH AT OUR KIDS??? Anyway, here’s the cartoon from another article featuring someone talking about themselves at odious length:
Disposable shit music writers of hypocrisy.
Jennifer Maerz (who may have the remedy, we’re not sure) kills this thing off big style though. Her article… WHO IS THE NEW COURTNEY!!! Yes, because Brody Dalle and Courtney Love are EXACTLY THE SAME PERSON!!! They were both married to a rock star!!! FUCKING SLUT! Brilliant. Who else is THE NEW COURTNEY???? Is it Wildflower? No, she’s black, silly fool, what would she be doing here? IT’S KAREN O!!! SHE’S A WOMAN! ALL WOMEN ARE THE SAME!!! Jennifer Maerz- cook or whore?
I mean, this is the worst kind of female Uncle Tomism that you can imagine, the sort of article beating off commissioning editors (Mr David, we can only assume) approve because it’s the sort of thing they wish they could write themselves, because they hate women. The third entry is Ursula Android. She’s a drag queen. That is the worst drag queen name ever. I WISH KURT HAD KILLED URSULA ANDROID. Good drag queen name: Rose DeWitt Bukkake.
The final piece of writing is too fuck-wittedly awful for me to even write about. Basically, some guy called Pollack writes fiction. LIKE MARTIN AMIS WHO IS FUCKING TALENTED LOL1982PAOLOROSSI. It features him stroking his ego with a vigour more commonly associated with Michael Fawcett’s wrist. It’s a wank-fantasy about him being of some minor importance and intereracting with celebs, rather than what his life actually consists of (I dunno. Raping children or working in a cheque clearing office or whatever).
It’s depressing, that’s what it is. It’s the equivalent of those underground MCs who throw off diss tracks aimed at Eminem. What’s the point? They’re never going to hear it. Your friends, who already like you, will laugh and go “Hahaha, you are clever”. Everyone else will just see you for what you are: a fucking idiot coat-tail riding. Goodnight.