"But it’s not just the song’s universal applicability that feels important right now. It’s also Dylan’s sneering, taunting tone."

"You could hear that same tone — a kind of sarcastic contempt, directed at an unnamed 'you' — 15 years ago in Lady Gaga’s anthems of alienated love and today in Kendrick Lamar’s diss tracks. ('Your lil’ memes is losin’ steam, they figured you out.') I sense the same spirit, too, behind television shows like 'The White Lotus,' where almost everyone is morally repulsive but no one knows it, or (if they suspect it) has any idea what to do about it...."

Writes Sebastian Smee, in "The uncanny Bob Dylan song that inaugurated an era of dread/Dylan is the Picasso of popular music. His ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ speaks more powerfully to what it feels like to be alive in 2025 than anything I can think of" (WaP0)(free-access link).

I wasn't going to read this article, because I didn't need The Washington Post to help me understand a song I've been listening to — very attentively — for 60 years.

But then I saw that it was written by Sebastian Smee, so I read it.

Lady Gaga is here to help... but don't touch her!

Lady Gaga ran to help a photographer who fell at the #Oscars pic.twitter.com/czfGHvN29s

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) March 13, 2023

I like the way she got all dressed and made up and coiffed for the red carpet, then took it all off to do her stage performance styled pretty much like the average person watching the show at home from the couch.

"Lady Gaga is being sued by the woman charged with the theft of her two French bulldogs."

"Jennifer McBride said that Gaga, 36, made it clear that she would pay the person who returned her dogs $500K, 'no questions asked.'... McBride reportedly wants the $500K and also wants the court to triple the damages to $1.5 million for posting the misleading reward."

The Daily Mail reports.

Think this through carefully. McBride was charged with receiving stolen property and as an accessory after the fact. She knew the men who took the dog, and motivated by the offer of a reward, she got the dog back to the owner.

Do we want people to believe that offers of rewards like this will be enforced in court? Won't that cause more dog snatchings? Maybe it should be illegal to offer a reward like this. It's a kind of encouragement of crime, and it hurts other people.

Who needs rational argument when you've got hashtags?

Systemic oppression is evil and destroys the world #Rittenhouse

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) November 20, 2021

I mean, I could just as well tweet: Brainlessness is ruining everything #LadyGaga 

Or: Logic leaps R Us #hashtags

"Thank you so much for being the person for all of us on 'Friends' that was — I don’t know if this is the right way to say it — but the different one, or the one that was really herself."

Said Lady Gaga to Lisa Kudrow on the "Friends" reunion, quoted in "'Friends: The Reunion': 5 Things We Learned/You might think there’s nothing more to know about the show and its cast, but the reunion special, which premiered Thursday on HBO Max, reveals a few things" (NYT).

I watched it, and in fact, I have watched every episode of "Friends" — all, save one, in the last few years.  I came to the show familiar with only one of the performers, and that was Lisa Kudrow. I considered "The Comeback" the best TV comedy ever, and I'd always been a big fan of the movie "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion."

But I didn't really like hearing Lady Gaga say that Kudrow's character was "the one that was really herself." The others were... what? Really somebody other than themselves? Maybe Gaga doesn't have facility with language, but I think she deliberately said something challenging, because she prefaced the remark with "I don’t know if this is the right way to say it." Well, the rest of us don't know what "it" is. My interpretation was that she meant to characterize Phoebe (Kudrow's character) as the outsider. In that light, perhaps it's comforting and exciting for many viewers to see that character gets to be with the other 5. The idea seems to be that the popular kids include one oddball in their group, as if that must be every oddball's dream. 

Gaga's theory — as I understand it — is a putdown of the rest of the characters — and of the entire show — who are all outsiders in their own way.

Another issue with the Gaga appearance: Was it at the expense of Chrissie Hynde? The Gaga bit used material from the episode — "The One with the Baby on the Bus" — that had Chrissie Hynde playing "Smelly Cat" with Phoebe. If I had to look at pop stars to find the different one, or the one that was really herself, I'd pick Hynde before Gaga. The disinclusion troubles me. The show is all about keeping the original group together (even though — spoiler alert — the series refrained from ending with each of the characters married to one of the others (4 ended up in Friend-on-Friend couples, but they brought in an outsider to marry Phoebe, and they left Joey without a love of his life)).

ADDED: Here's Chrissie Hynde on the show:

Melania tells a joke in West Bend, Wisconsin.

"Joe Biden says he could do a better job leading this nation. Apparently, when you hide in a basement, you feel safe communicating your wishful thinking."

I love the rough-hewn lumber background. It's almost as expressive of Melania's oneness with the place as Lady Gaga's pickup truck.

Now, Lady Gaga was mocked for that effort at performing American rural culture — redneckface, we might call it.

I’m voting for America #vote #election2020 pic.twitter.com/bspDNkxnhJ

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) October 31, 2020

Much as that deserves mockery, perhaps it's so absurd it comes all the way back around to decent respect. The dashing of the nearly full beer can onto the ground might be the equivalent of a wink. I'm kidding! But the truth is Lady Gaga really does drive a truck — a 1993 Ford SVT Lightning pickup. 

The Trump campaign has responded, not on the strange visuals, but on the issue: "Nothing exposes Biden’s disdain for the forgotten working men & women of PA like campaigning with anti-fracking activist Lady Gaga... Biden repeatedly promised left-wing activists he would end fracking, which would be an economic death sentence and financial Armageddon for families in Pennsylvania and across the country." 

Meanwhile, we could talk about the clothes Melania wore to West Bend — brass buttoned up and staunchly military — and the choice of a rough wood background in West Bend (which isn't a rural outpost). We've seen that rough-hewn wooden statue of Melania — so perhaps that background is as appropriate as Lady Gaga's big truck.

What mileage does that huge thing get? It's much bigger than the 1993 Ford pickup, which I see only gets 14 mpg in the city. You know Gaga collects cars. Here are 14 of them. That Rolls-Royce Corniche gets 9 mpg in the city. How can an anti-fracking activist have cars like that? Is there a such thing as an out-and-proud activist for hypocrisy?

"'I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone,' she explained, 'they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.'"

"She was laying out why she didn’t have a partner, why she worried about the depletion of artistic energy that stripping bare in front of someone could precipitate. 'I’m lonely when I’m in relationships,' she continued. 'It’s my condition as an artist.'... There it was, in black and white: Dating could sap you. There it was: If you want to be your fullest self, it’s possible a partner will weigh you down...."

From "How Lady Gaga convinced me to give up dating — and finish my book" by Anna Maxymiw (WaPo).

I think "tak[ing] my creativity from me through my vagina" is a better image than "weighing you down."

Gaga had me researching incubi — the demons that have sex with women. I was wondering if they were thought to extract the creativity from women. I'm reading Wikipedia and it seems that incubi are involved in the very specific form of creativity that is childbearing:

Incubi were thought to be demons who had sexual relations with women, sometimes producing a child by the woman... Thomas Aquinas argued against the possibility of children being conceived by intercourse with demons: "Still, if some are occasionally begotten from demons, it is not from the seed of such demons, nor from their assumed bodies, but from the seed of men, taken for the purpose; as when the demon assumes first the form of a woman, and afterwards of a man; just so they take the seed of other things for other generating purposes."... It became generally accepted that incubi and succubi were the same demon, able to switch between male and female forms. A succubus would be able to sleep with a man and collect his sperm, and then transform into an incubus and use that seed on women.... 

Gaga wanted artistic creativity, so the idea that the man is "taking" her creativity through the vagina could be understood as his giving creative force to her, but in a way that determines where her creative energy will go, which is into childbearing.

At the Grammys, Michelle Obama only needed to open her mouth to set the audience into raving ecstasy.

That was after Alicia Keys gave a speech, introduced "all my sisters," and Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, and Jada Pinkett Smith had each given little speeches. Scroll back and look at all that if you want. I just wanted you to see how the celebrities, exposed to an intense concentration of stardom, went so wild over Michelle.

I never watch the Grammys. I just saw that in the news this morning.

Big shakeup at The Golden Globes last night.

I used to care. I used to minute-by-minute blog the whole show, but now I haven't seen any of the movies, and there's nothing that can't wait until the next morning. What used to take hours is now accomplished in a couple minutes of reading.

But I have one question. Why were "A Star Is Born" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the "Drama" category? The Golden Globes have a "Musical or Comedy" category, and these 2 movies seem awfully musical.

From the Daily Mail article: "No doubt many were surprised by the win as Bohemian Rhapsody was generally poorly reviewed with 62% on Tomatometer by Rotten Tomatoes with top critics giving it 48%."

As for not talking about Trump:

It definitely seemed to be a concerted effort as host Sandra Oh previously told The Hollywood Reporter: 'I'm not interested in [talking about Trump] at all. What I’m interested in is pointing to actual real change. I want to focus on that because people can pooh-pooh Hollywood all they want – and there is a lot to pooh-pooh, sure – but we also make culture. How many gazillions of people have seen Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians? That changes things.'

One moment did get political, however, as Christian Bale had one of the most memorable speeches of the night while accepting Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his role portraying former US Vice President Dick Cheney in Vice. He blasted the former politician as he said: 'Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration on how to play this role... I will be cornering the market on charisma-free a******s. What do you think, Mitch McConnell next? That could be good.'

"Lady Gaga’s ‘Shallow’ From ‘A Star Is Born’ Looks Unbeatable for Best Original Song."

A headline I'm blogging only because the first 2 posts of the day suggest the theme is "shallow." I googled the word "shallow," and until just now I had no idea it was the title of song that is phenomenally popular right now.

The linked article has something like a spoiler about this movie I don't care about:

But the biggest story about “Shallow” is how it evolved from a song about drowning and transcendence into the powerful anthem about love and filling the void personally and professionally. “Gaga was writing from the standpoint of Ally as an end credit song, because in the original script Bradley’s character drowns,” said co-writer Mark Ronson.

So... if you're in water, drowning, but it's shallow water... stand up and walk out. But I'm reading the lyrics, and "shallow" appears in only in the negative: "I'm off the deep end... We're far from the shallow now."

The NYT runs the style piece "Face Tattoos Go Mainstream" the day after the obituary for the heavily face-tattooed Zombie Boy.

August 4th: "Face Tattoos Go Mainstream" (noting various characters with an "amazing pop star life" who have things tattooed on their face, such as "Stay Away" on the forehead or a marijuana leaf on the temple or a portrait of Anne Frank on the cheek-to-neck region (and then tattooing a marijuana leaf on Anne Frank's cheek*)):

[In the past] one saw a face tat and thought: Aryan Brotherhood or gang member or sideshow performer. Famous face tattoo wearers of the recent past, like Mike Tyson, Charles Manson and the drug-addled skateboarder Jay Adams, conformed to the stereotype of the rough character....

“A lot of kids are doing it to make themselves bigger on social media,” said Travis Hardy, 30, a creative director in Los Angeles who works with musicians. “It’s kind of corny.” Last month, he a got a lightning bolt tattooed under his left eye. “I don’t need that,” Mr. Hardy said, referring to others’ quest for attention. “This isn’t for followers or comments.... There’s no turning back. There’s no normal job or whatever... I’m going to continue to creative direct or write treatments for music videos or stage design. I’m not going to turn around. This served as a stamp: I believe in myself.”

August 3rd: "Rick Genest, Tattooed Model Known as Zombie Boy, Dies at 32":

When he was a teenager he was told by doctors that he had a brain tumor and that he would need surgery that would leave him disfigured for life. [But instead he received a laser treatment that was not disfiguring.]...

He then began getting tattoos. His first was of a skull and crossbones on his left shoulder. Then he had his face tattooed to resemble a skull. He decided to shave off his mohawk and had his head tattooed to resemble a brain....

Lady Gaga approached him in 2011 to participate in the “Born This Way” video,** in which she wore makeup that resembled his tattoos....

Mr. Genest wrote in The Mirror that he was proud of achieving his boyhood dream of becoming “a freak.” “And yes,” he wrote, “Please do stare, I like it.”

_____________________

* For real.

** Here's that video, and, obviously, he was not born that way. It was a later, intentional imposition on his physical being... as was the death, if Lady Gaga's initial tweet is to be believed.




(My screenshots from "Born This Way." To see the Zombie Boy part of the very long "Born This Way" video, begin at 4:11.)

ADDED: Here's the ad Genest did for a tattoo-covering product:

"Nothing more beautiful than everyone putting their differences aside to help humanity in the face of catastrophe."

Nothing more beautiful than everyone putting their differences aside to help humanity in the face of catastrophe. #OneAmericaAppeal pic.twitter.com/2TPdPonvWv

— xoxo, Gaga (@ladygaga) October 22, 2017

"It was a revelation, it was a reckoning... Gaga and I just looking at each other, and being like, fuck it, we need to touch each other."

Said Katy Perry — describing the scene at the Hillary Clinton election night party — quoted in a long NYT article titled "Katy Perry Woke Up. She Wants to Tell You All About It." The NYT — which does an "expletive deleted" where I've helpfully supplied the "fuck" — informs us that Ms. Perry was "downing drinks" and she "reached out to the nearest person for physical support."

Don't you love it when you're reaching out to the nearest person for physical support and it's Lady Gaga?

Anyway, there's a new Katy Perry. She's rising about fakery:

“All the awards shows are fake,” she said, “and all the awards that I’ve won are fake,” she added, explaining that they don’t represent the audience. “They’re constructs.”

The old Katy Perry wasn’t a construct, she explained, and she isn’t dead. “I didn’t kill her, because I love her, and she is exactly what I had to do then,” she said. “And I’m not a con artist, I didn’t con people, like, that was just me. And this is me now.”

Remember when Nixon said "I am not a con artist"?

Gaga solo.

The visual balance of those 2 words has me sidetracking into my favorite song from the late George Michael: Wake me up before you gogo/Gaga/I'm not planning on going solo....

Why did Lady Gaga go solo at the Super Bowl last night?

We're used to seeing the big star surrounded by lots of other stars. Last year, Beyoncé got assistance from Coldplay, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, Gustavo Dudamel, University of California Marching Band and Youth Orchestra L.A. The year before that Katy Perry had Lenny Kravitz, Missy Elliott, and Arizona State University Sun Devil Marching Band.

When Madonna performed in 2012, she had LMFAO, Cirque du Soleil, Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., Cee Lo Green, Andy Lewis, Avon High School Drumline, Center Grove High School Drumline, Fishers High School Drumline, Franklin Central High School Drumline, Southern University Dancing Dolls, and a 200 Person Choir consisting of Indianapolis locals.

I was going to say that Madonna seems like the closest thing to Gaga, but in Super Bowl halftime terms, she's as far from Gaga as Gaga can get.

We haven't seen a fully solo halftime act since 2010, when The Who performed... and The Who are a group and hence not as fully solo as the solo performer Gaga. And The Who were the last in a line of old-school rock acts that came out and performed like a band in a stadium. The immediately preceding years, in reverse chronological order were Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Prince (who had support from the Florida A&M University Marching 100 Band), The Rolling Stones, and Paul McCartney.

If you take one step further back, you get the notorious halftime show of 2004 when Justin Timberlake ripped Janet Jackson's bodice and exposed one nipple-shielded breast. That show was also crowded with Jessica Simpson, P. Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock, and 2 different marching bands.

So why did Lady Gaga go it alone*? I think it was to show off the extreme energy and athleticism involved. She began perched on the rooftop, courageously dropped on a wire, powered through 13 minutes of song, and ended singing while running upstairs. It was a big brag: I'm stronger than everyone!

Was that about her or about all women? I heard someone assert that it was a "female empowerment" message. Maybe it was about Hillary Clinton. Lady Gaga was a high-visibility supporter of Hillary Clinton's failed run at the presidency. And Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for Gaga's Super Bowl "message."

The very last thing Lady Gaga did in her performance could be interpreted as a statement about Hillary: She fell off her platform.


_______________________________________

* She did have a gang of dancers with her some of the time. I was a bit puzzled by what they were supposed to be in their all-white costumes, which — with strips of fabric hanging off — seemed like bandages. They weren't behaving like mummies, and there were football helmets and shoulder pads, so I wondered if it was some sort of contribution to the football is so dangerous it should be abolished movement.

"Lady Gaga accidentally dressed a bit like a Nazi at Hillary Clinton's Presidential rally."

Oh? But if a Trump-supporting celebrity had dressed like that it wouldn't be characterized as an accident. The explanation for why this...

Why was Lady Gaga dressed as a nazi? pic.twitter.com/q99syEN7fj

— Maria (@CupidDelux) November 8, 2016

... should not be viewed as a Nazi look is: "the jacket was actually the same one that Michael Jackson wore when he visited the White House, which is a nice tribute to the late pop icon."

You still need a reason for deciding to pay a tribute to Michael Jackson at a Hillary rally. If a celebrity at a Trump rally had dressed like that and then — after it's perceived as a Nazi look and tweeted about furiously — sought refuge in the Michael Jackson provenance, not only would the excuse be rejected — it looks Nazi and you wanted that look — but the sins of Michael Jackson would be loaded on top.

And why did Michael Jackson wear that jacket? There have been stories published saying that Michael Jackson was fascinated by Nazis:

It turns out that Jackson had a huge collection of Nazi movies and documentaries that he displayed on the walls at his Neverland ranch.  Norman Scherer, the videotape distributor who procured the rare videos, said he assumed that Jackson just loved the military garb and lockstep marching – a perfectly normal assumption when someone reveals to you that they’re obsessed with Nazis.

So that's another reason why tracing Gaga's jacket to Jackson fails to break the Nazi association. I don't know what Jackson meant to be doing with his military get-up and why he loved Nazi imagery (if he did), but saying the jacket was Jackson's doesn't make it not a Nazi jacket.

The reason Lady Gaga will get away with dressing like that isn't because the jacket's Jackson's, but because she came out for Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump.

"Isn't there some classic rule, 'Underboob or underbutt, not both'?"

From the comments, here.

Justin Verlander is engaged to Kate Upton.

I'm seeing lots of news stories about this, and they all feature pictures of the exceedingly gorgeous Kate Upton. I think that's unbalanced gender-wise. Males and females are fully equal in the modern American marriage. So let me correct the imbalance. Here is Justin Verlander:



ADDED: The news of the engagement came out as a result of Kate's wearing a big diamond ring to the Met Gala. You can find her somewhere on this page, which has about a hundred photographs of models, singers, and actresses as dressed up as humanly possible. I recommend Claire Danes in a big ballgown that lights up in the dark, Lady Gaga and Madonna strapped into elaborate bottomless things, and Taylor Swift stealing my hairstyle.

Gaga's tribute to Bowie.

At the Grammys last night:



The beginning is especially good. It becomes a medley that requires an immense amount of coordination, admirable in a live show if not entirely aesthetically sublime.

ADDED: The red carpet outfit — also a Bowie tribute — was better than the white jumpsuit in the performance. I don't really understand the jumpsuit. Why was it so baggy? When Elvis wore a white jumpsuit, he kept it tight even when he was unpleasingly plump. And that was more of an Elvis white jumpsuit, wasn't it? When I think of Bowie in a white jumpsuit, I think of the "Ashes to Ashes" costume:



Yes, it's white. Don't tell me it's blue. I've seen it in person.

"The most Vine-able moment of the night, for sure, was when Gaga confidently walked by Leo..."

"... to pick up her best TV supporting actress trophy for 'American Horror Story,' and he got unnecessarily freaked out when she bumped his elbow." That's how it's put in WaPo's "Golden Globes 2016: Leonardo DiCaprio’s Lady Gaga incident and 12 other things you missed" by Stephanie Merry and Emily Yahr.



I've watched that 10 times and I'm quite sure Merry and Yahr are obtuse. Lady Gaga did not just "confidently walk by" DiCaprio. She deliberately but subtly and sexily collided with him because it was funny and fun and she smiled. He could have been irked at perceived disrespect, but he knew he was on camera and performed a jovial 2-part reaction. Watch the eyebrows. Part 1 is not Jack Nicholsonian enough so he does a second, more exaggerated eyebrow raising. It's acting. He wasn't "unnecessarily freaked out," which makes him seem wimpy-jumpy. Unfair.

ADDED: One reason it happened is that DiCaprio is expanding out into the aisle. He's manspreading — the upper-body form of manspreading. Gaga's hips — in that high-structured dress — are flaring out in a way that used to be called "secretary spread" — so: womanspreading. It was a spread fest.

"I want this chick to throw up on me in front of the world, so that I can tell them, you know what?"

"You could never, ever degrade me as much as I could degrade myself and look how beautiful it is what I do."

Said Lady Gaga, talking to Howard Stern, about her video for the song "Swine" and revealing that, years ago, she was raped.

"I don't want to be defined by it... I'll be damned if somebody is going to say that every creatively intelligent thing I ever did is all boiled down to one dickhead that did that to me."