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Could James Cameron's Avatar kill 20th Century Fox? According to today's New York Times, probably not. Michael Cieply reports that Fox has brought in outside investors to minimize the company's risk in the event that the $500 million Blue Man Group-in-outer space flick turns out to be a Heaven's Gate-style megaflop. Along with this smart financial buffering, the Times piece reveals that "Fox is backing up Mr. Cameron's movie with what an executive recently called the studio's ‘secret weapon.' " What is this secret weapon that has the power to stave off potential bankruptcy? Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
Fox's confidence in the Squeakquel is easy to understand: Despite rotten reviews, the company's first foray into computer-generated rodentia—2007's Jason Lee starrer Alvin and the Chipmunks—brought in $217 million. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, which opens on Christmas Day (a week after Avatar's debut), appears to follow the same high-pitched formula. Check out the trailer below—Interspecies romance! The best furball football catching since Air Bud: Golden Receiver!—and judge for yourself if Fox's confidence is misplaced.
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Alongside images of modern cities fractured like cracked ice, or a colossal Jesus statue toppling down on helpless hordes, posters, billboards, and trailers for Roland Emmerich's upcoming action film, 2012, invite you to Google 2012 to learn more. Doing so calls up the film's official Web site, as well as its IMDB and Wikipedia entries. But since 2012 is not only the name of a movie, but also the year that—according to certain interpretations—the Mayan calendar predicts the world will end, Googling 2012 further summons a slew of amateur scholars, fearmongering opportunists, and fly-by-night profiteers, all of whom are seeing Web traffic skyrocket as the release date nears.
Sponsored Links—sites that chose 2012 as a keyword in Google's paid advertising scheme, AdSense—include a numerologist, survival kits of canned goods and bagged soup, the University of Metaphysical Sciences, a New England environmental group, and "survival land" for sale in Montana and Wyoming. The site Prophecy News Watch has used 2012 as a keyword since 2004 (in fact, most of the mentioned sites had previously employed the term), but site rep Kade Hawkins said Google impressions have increased tenfold in 2009, spiking to nearly 3 million in October alone. An estimated 1 percent of those impressions yield a click-through to the site.
Other sites are seeing increased action, no thanks to AdSense but simply because Google's matrix ranks them high for the search term 2012. John Kehne, whose Web site www.December212012.com is a cheery depot of apocalyptica that maintains a running countdown to the big date and a roster of "celebrity believers" like Lil' Wayne and Montel Williams, said he moved to a more powerful server to accommodate the new traffic. Australian Robert Bast, who since 2000 has slowly published chapters of his book, "Survive 2012," on his Web site, has seen an increase in unique visitors from 5,000 per day to 20,000, though some days it's been as high as 80,000. "The free promotion of my site via Sony was nice," he said via e-mail, referring to 2012's global distributor. "But you never know, the idea for the movie may have begun from a visit to my site." Bast was joking—but it's possible that his site and others like it inspired the marketing campaign if not the film itself.
Sony's marketers chose a deliberately diffuse method for drumming up interest in 2012. A more precise search term, like "2012 The Movie," would have better directed traffic to Emmerich-related sites. But in this case, imprecision is good currency, because by sharing attention and traffic with crackpot sites, Sony draws attention to the existing paranoid hysteria and makes the film seem like a more significant cultural event. Likewise, in addition to the alarmist-sounding official home page, www.Whowillsurvive2012.com, Sony has created a network of six satellite sites, all launched during the past year, that deftly blur the lines between the film's fictional world and actual armchair paranoia, given names like Corruptiontheory.com and Thisistheend.com (easily mistaken for the Church of God's The-end.com). One of the dummy sites, Instituteforhumancontinuity.org, mixes fictional conceits like a human lottery system and boutique personal bunkers with links to real-world organizations like the Alliance to Rescue Civilization and even a Guatemalan real estate agency. Down this rabbit hole, it can be hard to distinguish between true believers and hustlers, survivalists and Sony, but all are happy to take your money.
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We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines—but which headlines? Every week, Brow Beat matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
Nov. 6, 2009:
"Boy Gone Astray"
These Are Their Stories
In the first act, a female drug dealer is murdered by two 14-year-old American boys who learned how to use firearms at a training camp in Mexico.
This Is the Real Story
According to an April 2008 story in the Dallas Morning News, Mexican drug cartels operate military-style camps "to train cartel recruits—ranging from Mexican army deserters to American teenagers—who then carry out killings and other cartel assignments on both sides of the border." A June 2009 New York Times story described how Mexican cartels recruit American teens "with promises of high pay, fancy cars and sexy women."
These Are Their Stories
One of the teenage assassins seems completely unmoved by his actions; he laughs about the victim and sings a song about "la gringa brava" to his parents when they come to visit. The detectives discover that the song is a narcocorrido tribute to a Mexican gang so badass it has "hot Yankee blonds" selling its dope. On the day of the murder, a group associated with a rival cartel releases another song about la gringa brava's death, mentioning details the police had not released.
This Is the Real Story
Elijah Wald's 2002 book Narcocorrido: A Journey Into the Music of Guns, Drugs, and Guerrillas recounts the history of corridos from anti-colonial ballads to a sort of musical newspaper educating listeners about the drug world. In a 1999 New York Times story, an accused trafficker explained the purpose of the songs: "[T]hrough the corridos comes the philosophy, how the members of the cartel have to behave. They tell you what they did wrong. Why they were killed. You learn what you have to do so they won't kill you."
"Doped"
These Are Their Stories
Brenda Sawyer is driving four children—two of her own and two nieces—to a weekend getaway when she becomes disoriented. She drives erratically and enters the highway in the wrong direction, where she crashes head-on into an oncoming vehicle. Only her son survives.
This Is the Real Story
On July 26, 2009, Diane Schuler drove her minivan the wrong way onto an exit ramp and rammed into an SUV. She was killed, along with her daughter and three nieces; the three men in the other vehicle also died. Only her son survived. According to the New York Daily News, tests revealed that Schuler had smoked pot and drunk at least 10 ounces of liquor during the 90-minute drive.
These Are Their Stories
The detectives find alcohol in Brenda's system and in her car and assume she was drinking, but then they realize that her allergy medicine had been spiked with Propofol, a powerful anesthetic. They discover that Brenda and her boss, Zack Marshall (Mad Men's Harry Crane, looking just as ineffectual in a straight tie), had gathered evidence proving that a highly profitable but medically ineffective drug manufactured by the pharmaceutical company they worked for was being marketed illegally. Whistleblowers can receive a slice of settlements, and Brenda was threatening to donate their cut to charity, so Marshall poisoned her nasal spray and slipped booze into her smoothie. He had no idea there would be children in the vehicle.
This Is the Real Story
Under the False Claims Act, whistleblowers are entitled to between 15 percent and 30 percent of recovered damages, and according to a Gannett story from Nov. 4, 2009, "Of the top 20 False Claims Act cases, measured by the amount of money recovered, 12 involved judgments or settlements against pharmaceutical companies, accounting for billions of dollars in recoveries." In September, a whistleblower earned $51.5 million from Pfizer as a result of a suit alleging the company had promoted pain drug Bextra and 12 other drugs for unapproved uses and doses.
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The final challenge involved a trip to the J. Paul Getty Museum, where the designers were told to create a look using the Getty Center as inspiration.
Only three of the five remaining contestants could go on to Fashion Week in Bryant Park, and they didn't make the judges' jobs easy. John William Godward's sexy 19th-century painting "Mischief and Repose" inspired Irina to create a dowdy below-the-knee dress in what looked like sea-foam crepe; an ornate French bed led Carol Hannah to design a full-length gold gown; and the Getty's architecture drove Althea to produce a pleated-pattern skirt that, according to Tim Gunn, looked like "a panel of puckering." Nevertheless, they won the right to show 12 designs in New York.
Christopher stared at some algae-spotted rocks and conjured a garment typical of his style: a cute top paired with an unnecessary corset and an absurdly heavy stiff long skirt. Gordana was inspired by Monet's The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light to make a gorgeous dress in silk organza that everyone agreed was both beautiful and clearly connected to the original painting. They were the final designers of the season to hear Heidi intone the words, "You're out."
Stats
Number of times Tim Gunn said, "Make it work!": Tim was far too busy reminding the designers how much was on the line to utter those three little words.
Number of crying contestants: Even Irina got a catch in her throat. Who would've thought that Althea was the most tear-resistant contestant!
The Contestants
Gordana may have lost her grip on the fan favorite prize this week. She and Irina ganged up on Carol Hannah, and she didn't thank the judges when she bade them "Auf Wiedersehen." But her biggest error was to make too much of her humble origins in the former Yugoslavia. Believe me, I know very well that the race of life has a staggered start, but her rivals were a self-taught gay man from the sticks of Minnesota; an autodidact from Charleston, S.C.; a big-haired bottle blonde from Dayton, Ohio; and an immigrant from the Republic of Georgia. Not exactly the Harvard Sewing Class of 1999.
The Judges
Talk about womanpower! With Michael Kors absent, and only one male contestant in the final five, Episode 12 was an estrogen explosion. Fashion designer and former Design Star judge Cynthia Rowley and "supermodel and style icon" Cindy Crawford took their places next to Nina Garcia.
The panel didn't make much effort to disguise their true feelings. The praise for Irina's ugly dress was comically faint: "I liked the inspiration that she chose" (Rowley); "She had a very clear vision, and it definitely did refer to the painting" (Crawford). Nina didn't even dissemble, declaring it "very old lady." Irina is the clear leader of this year's middling pack, but if this had been a normal week, she would have made her first appearance in the bottom three.
I hear America screaming: When Nina confessed, "I don't know who Gordana is as a designer," you could hear Project Runway viewers across the land yell, "Maybe that's because you missed five weeks of judging!"
Did the judges send the right people to Fashion Week?: Yes. It has been a mediocre season, but the three designers who are heading to Bryant Park are the ones with the strongest points of view. I haven't liked a single outfit that Althea has made, but aesthetically and trendwise, she fits into the fashion world far better than Christopher or Gordana.
Bold prediction for who'll take the big prize: At this stage, the smart money has to be on Irina.
Previous Project Runway Recaps: Week 1, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11
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Jonah Weiner: Hi, Jody. In deciding the song we'd discuss this week we considered a few candidates, but "Ambling Alp" excited us most. Yeasayer is a New York band, and this is the lead single from its forthcoming 2010 album, Odd Blood. We start the song ankle-deep in noise, out of which bursts an ecstatic eighth-note clatter, snares that thwack with some serious '80s-style reverb, and a poignant hooting melody that serves as the musical and emotional anchor. (Animal Collective, to whom Yeasayer have been occasionally compared, start their great single "Grass" with a somewhat similar dynamic build, although this one opens up even bigger.) "Ambling Alp" rewards headphone listening: There are all these little sounds scurrying and rattling in the mix, including a little gasping vocal sample I only heard on my fifth spin.
I don't mean it as an insult when I say that the song puts me in mind of a hipster Rusted Root. (Rusted Root is best known for its minor 1995 hit "Send Me On My Way," which I loathed then for its white-guys-in-dashikis vibe but have since come to enjoy, albeit suspiciously, for its unabashed corniness.) I guess I'm thinking mostly of the unabashedly corny themes of personal affirmation in Yeasayer's lyrics (the refrain goes, "Stick up for yourself, son," and the song, like Yeasayer's breakout single "2080," is about keeping your head up: "Your lows will have their complement of highs," Chris Keating assures us at one point) and the way this positivity jibes with the polychromatic, polyrhythmic music. I'm sure Yeasayer spend much more time listening to David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but it's nice to hear a band working in indie-rock/art-rock—sly, oblique genres, by and large—that is all to happy to pen a jubilant self-help anthem. Also there's a line about giving fascists hell, and who can't get behind that?
Jody Rosen: Jonah, forget Rusted Root. Try Baha Men. One of the things I love about “Ambling Alp”—and there’s lots I love about this clattery art-pop freakout—is the fact that it’s a stealth jock jam. As best I can make out, the second verse goes like this: “Oh, Max Schmeling was a formidable foe/ The Ambling Alp was too, at least that’s what I’m told/ But if you learn one thing, you’ve learned it well/ It’s true, you must give fascists hell.” The user-generated lyrics sites that I checked have a totally mangled version of the words. (“Old Man Schlemming” etc.) Evidently there’s a history-literacy problem in the hipster community. Worse: there’s a boxing-literacy problem. See, the song’s about Joe Louis and two of his famous opponents: Primo Carnera, the pugilist-hero of Mussolini’s regime, and, of course, Hitler’s beloved Schmeling, Louis’ foe in two legendary 1930s bouts. “Ambling Alp” sounds like some “poetic” indie-rock nonsense; it was actually Carnera’s nickname. (The dude was a man-mountain.)
But, yeah: Yeasayer uses this boxing stuff as the jumping-off point for an admirably unfashionable uplift anthem. Keating sings: “And if anyone should cheat you/ Take advantage of or beat you/ Raise your head/ And wear your wounds with pride”—sentiments so insipid they could comfortably snuggle up inside a circa-1990 Whitney Houston ballad. Just what you’ve been waiting for, Williamsburg: your very own “Greatest Love of All.”
The thing is, Yeasayer is an amazing band. I’m not as instantly smitten with this song as I was with “Sunrise” (2007), which, for me, rates as the absolute apotheosis of this decade’s bizarro Brooklyn psychedelia. (Sorry, TV on the Radio.) But I love the way the band takes what could be a fairly standard exercise in '80s revivalism—I hear more Depeche Mode here than I do Byrne/Eno, by the way—and just screws it up. Check out the little breakdown around the 2:24 mark—that freaky falsetto chorale. Also, the terrific organ solo that erupts at 3:44: a little circa-1967 garage rock plopped into the middle of 1987. All these flourishes enhance “Ambling Alp” without overstocking it. (Unlike a lot of indie arty-farties, Yeasayer are real songwriters; they take care not to disrupt their music’s momentum with too much fussiness.) Plus, the bassist is a straight ninja.
J.W.: Funny you mention Depeche Mode—listening to the rest of the album, which will be out in February, I heard singing that reminded me in places of Dave Gahan. Keating is a bit of an over-singer in a way I like—he sells his stuff. I didn't hear much Martin Gore, but then again I wasn't listening for it.
J.R.: You’re right about Keating. He knows what line of work he’s in: show business. I like that. He has a nice upper register, too, which he loves to show off. (In just about every Yeasayer song, he breaks out the falsetto by the time the bridge rolls around.) He really could be a rock star, if Yeasayer weren’t such dedicated weirdos.
But, wait, Jonah, how come you have the Yeasayer album advance and I don’t? Who’s the flak that’s servicing you with this product? What is it—do you have more indie cred or something? Aren’t you the guy who likes Creed?
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As I write this, the apostrophe-deprived search term big bird s birthday tops Google Trends, proof that Sesame Street's publicity department is hard at work marketing the show's 40th season. In his innocence and eagerness, Big Bird is enormously endearing, but could we also devote a moment to his blobbiest blue colleague? Here is Renata Adler writing on Cookie Monster—"part of the intellectual history of a generation"—in The New Yorker in 1972, a passage especially entertaining in the way the Muppet's fuzziness brushes the writer's cold, brushed-metal style:
Cookie is a fanatic, undeviating in the quality of his obsession. He eats things. Many lessons on Sesame Street are terminated when something eats them. But Cookie, who has of late been eating mainly cookies, is a junkie. "To me, your nose is a cookie," he once said to another Muppet in a desperate moment. When cookies arrive, he tends to eat the entire shipment, but he is moved to empathy at the sight of a human being temporarily deprived of a cookie.
The most monstrous of Sesame Street's monsters, he is desire turned comic-grotesque. In an important sign of his derangement, Cookie Monster is the only core character to sport bobbling pupils in his eyes. His signature song, "C Is for Cookie," is a pub song invested with rousing grandeur, an anthem to monomania. "Let's think of other things that starts with C," he growls, before entertaining second thoughts. "Ah, who cares about the other things!" His lack of interest in much other than eating extends even to grammar. Him wants proper declension.
His diet is these days more balanced, having come to include fruits, vegetables, and Stephen Colbert's Peabody Award, but his soul is immutable. He is brought to you by the insatiability of every child. Sesame Street taught us how to watch television, and Cookie Monster taught us how to want it.
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Late last month, I wrote an essay about Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA," a song produced and co-written by Lukasz Gottwald. Gottwald, who also goes by Dr. Luke, has had his Swedish fingerprints all over pop radio for several years, and around the same time the Cyrus piece ran, the video for another of his creations hit the Web: a single called "TiK ToK," performed by the 22-year-old rapper-singer Ke$ha. The song sets up shop on the fault line between charmingly daft and deeply irritating. The rapped verses are sub-Fergie-grade, proudly stuffed with groaners and to-hell-with-the-expiration-date slang ("Errbody getting crunk/ Boys tryina touch my junk"). The plotline plays like a sequel to Lady Gaga's "Just Dance": girl wakes up drunk, stays drunk, finds a dance floor and (spoiler alert) gets even drunker. (There are several YouTube videos of girls who look to be seventh graders goofily acting out the words.)
Some listeners probably noticed a more-than-passing similarity between the song and "Pop the Glock," a minor 2006 club hit by the French-American sorta-rapper Uffie, who records for the small Parisian dance label Ed Banger. "TiK ToK" rides a minimalist, 8-bit-video-game beat; "Pop the Glock" is built around a spare drum machine pattern. Ke$ha's faux-bad-girl rhymes are tweaked by AutoTune; Uffie's faux-bad-girl rhymes are run through a vocoder effect, which supplies the song with its only hint of melody.
This isn't the first time Gottwald seems to have hit the indie bins for inspiration—the breakdown on Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" (cued up here), which Gottwald co-produced, echoes the breakdown from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps" (cued up here). Nor is Gottwald the only pop producer to have done so. Compare the razored synthesizer riff, four-on-the-floor pulse, and syncopated pops of Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" (cued up here) with the razored guitars, disco beat, and syncopated cowbell clatter of The Rapture's "House of Jealous Lovers" (cued up here)—an influence Timberlake and the producer Timbaland have freely admitted. (A few years earlier, Timberlake's former girlfriend Britney Spears worked with The Rapture's former production duo, The DFA, on this never-released demo).
The pop mainstream's interest in the sounds of the hipster mainstream shows no sign of flagging. Last week, bedroom mewler Owl City scored the No. 1 song in the country with "Fireflies," a song that could not exist without The Postal Service's 2003 excursions into sighingly romantic, precisely enunciated synth-pop. I'm sure there are other examples of pop indie-jacking I'm forgetting (and vice versa, as recent experiments with AutoTune by Bon Iver and Vampire Weekend help to illustrate). Jot down any that occur to you in the comments section.
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After a brief hiatus, How I Met Your Mother returned this week with a new episode and set about addressing, once and for all, this season's nagging question: Can Robin and Barney be funny as a couple? The Shame Index is happy to report that the answer is a rather resounding yes.
Shameful:
—Ted's coinage of the term "New Relationship Smugness." Not particularly clever, not really necessary. The episode would have worked just as well without it.
—Barney advising Marshall that in order to win his fight with Lily, he needs a "surge." Not funny enough to overcome the questionable tastefulness of invoking the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the context of a spat about dirty dishes.
Awesome:
—The bagpipers upstairs. A wonderfully realized series of jokes: Equating the sound of the neighbors having sex with the drone of bagpipes was funny on its own, the reveal that the perpetrators were a pair of geriatrics was a nice twist, and it all came together when a bagpiping session inspired Ted to expose Barney and Robin's secret by seeking out their downstairs neighbor, the well-cast Phil from 12B.
—Marshall's Bull Durham-esque speech to Barney extolling his superior relationship skills, reprinted here in its full awesomeness:
Look at you, had a relationship for five minutes and think you can play with the big boys. That's adorable. Son, I been in a relationship since you had a ponytail and were playing Dave Matthews on your mama's Casio. I'm a good boyfriend in my sleep. I can rock a killer foot rub with one hand and brew a kick-ass cup of chamomile with the other that would make you weep. Hell, I've forgotten more about microwaving fat free popcorn and watching Sandra Bullock movies than you'll ever know. But thanks for your concern, rook.
—Ted and Barney's slap bet. The Shame Index loves a good slap bet.
—Barnstormer, Ro-Ro, and T-Mos. Especially T-Mos. "You have to wake up pretty early to slip one past the T-Mos."
—The Shame Index is on record opposing HIMYM's occasional flirtations with special effects yet couldn't help but enjoy the multiple Marshall/Lily pairs fighting simultaneously. The snippets from the various fights were spot on—"my mother doesn't hate you; she's neutral about you"—and the kicker—all the Marshalls freaking out over Lily's Shining impression—took the joke to an unexpected new level.
—Barney's ability to lead Marshall astray. Did a flashback to Marshall getting an ear pierced in '03 hit the cutting-room floor? If so, the Shame Index implores CBS to put it on the DVD.
—Lily's brutally effective strategy for winning fights with Marshall: cook his favorite meals—for herself. "On Sunday morning she made pancake, Ted. Pancake. And bacon strip."
Best episode yet this season? Bagpipe yeah.
Previous Shame Indices: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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Frederick Wiseman's La Danse, a 158-minute documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet, opens this week for a two-week run at New York’s Film Forum, followed by a national rollout through December. If you know the director’s work already, that sentence stands on its own as an argument for seeing the film. For the past 42 years, Wiseman has been patiently and rigorously documenting the life of assorted institutions, including homes for the criminally insane (Titicut Follies), public schools (High School), the Belmont racetrack (Racetrack), and hospital intensive-care units (Near Death). Without voice-over, intertitles, music, or other directorial interference, Wiseman enters a world with his camera (usually 16mm; here, HD video) and lets that world define itself. As a result, his films have a sober, meditative quality that makes other documentaries—even the smart ones—seem like glib propaganda. Given Wiseman’s fascination with both institutional culture and extralinguistic behavior (his subjects tend to say one thing with words and something else entirely with their bodies), it makes sense that he’d be drawn in his late career to the world of professional dance (his 1998 film Ballet chronicled a season at New York’s American Ballet Theater).
If you don’t like watching great dancers rehearse, you probably won’t appreciate La Danse—but, honestly, if you don’t like watching great dancers rehearse, what kind of life-loathing dullard are you? Dance is one of the few art forms that can be more fascinating to watch in the process of being made than it is in finished form. (Filmmaking is another—even a bad movie can make for a worthy making-of featurette.) But in between seeing some of the world’s best dancers practice everything from The Nutcracker Suite to work by the modern choreographers Pina Bausch and Angelin Preljocaj, viewers get a glimpse of all aspects of the company: the lunchroom, where dancers chow down on surprisingly large plates of steamed fish and crème brûlée, and the costume room where seamstresses stitch, iron, and hand-bead tutus. At a board meeting, an American board member bargains with the company’s stern artistic director for perks for the biggest benefactors. (Could they come and observe a live rehearsal? Absolument pas.) And in a reminder that these seemingly ethereal beings are also laborers, a principal dancer visits the director to complain about her overwhelming workload: “I’m not 25 anymore,” she points out, a commonplace that has a whole different ring when your career is guaranteed to be over by age 40. When that dancer's knees go out, she should consider picking up a film camera and reinventing herself as a documentary filmmaker. Frederick Wiseman is about to turn 80, and he shows no sign of tiring.
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We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines, but which headlines? Every week, Brow Beat matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
Oct. 30, 2009: "Human Flesh Search Engine"
These Are Their Stories
The first act of the episode, co-written by Slate contributor Matthew McGough, focuses on the murder of Sid Maxwell, the founder and CEO of Skintight Apparel, a company that "sells $5 T-shirts for $40." In the early stages of the investigation, the detectives suspect a former employee who sued for sexual harassment. (The company's lawyers countered that she should have understood she was working in "a highly sexualized work environment.")
This Is the Real Story
Sid Maxwell bears more than a passing resemblance to Dov Charney, founder and CEO of American Apparel, a purveyor of sweatshop-free skintight apparel. According to the New York Times Magazine, in 2005, "three former employees and an independent contractor filed three sexual-harassment lawsuits against Charney and American Apparel." Workers are now required to sign a document that acknowledges, "Employees working in the design, sales, marketing and other creative areas of the company will come into contact with sexually charged language and visual images."
These Are Their Stories
The detectives soon discover that a photograph of Maxwell texting while driving had been posted to Flashposse.net, a Web "forum for corrective social action," along with exhortations that he should be killed before he kills someone else. Flashposse community members identified the make and model of the car from the photo and hacked into DMV records to find the owner; Maxwell's address and his building's security entry code were also posted on the site. A schizophrenic Flashposse.net member used the information to enter the apartment and kill Maxwell.
This Is the Real Story
The episode's title is a reference to the Chinese nickname for "virtual mobs" that strike back at corrupt officials by bringing online attention to cases censored by Communist Party officials. According to a June 16, 2009, New York Times story, in several recent cases, "the Internet has cracked open a channel for citizens to voice mass displeasure with official conduct, demonstrating its potential as a catalyst for social change." As the article notes, some online vigilantes have posted personal information about alleged offenders.
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June Thomas is out of the office today, so Torie Bosch is filling in for this week's Project Runway recap.
Is it almost time for Bryant Park yet? Everyone seems to be running low on fresh material this week. The bad-tempered designers are accusing one another of swiping ideas, and the challenge itself is to "create a new look based on your best look." That's "best look" as defined by the judges, and a dreary collection of garments it is. There's not a single vibrant outfit, as each is gray, black, or brown. Surprisingly, no contestants quibbled with what the judges determined to be their best work of the season. I expected more whining.
Althea's high-waisted black pants, which bloused out before hugging the calf, gave her the win. Logan's attempt to complement his silver-and-black gown from Episode 1 resulted in something from a bad sci-fi movie, and he was booted.
Stats
Number of times Tim Gunn said, "Make it work!": Nada! Though we did get a clipped "Use your time exceedingly well." Maybe he's testing new catch phrases.
Number of crying contestants: None! Carol Hannah spent much of the episode looking on the verge of bursting into tears at any moment, but perhaps her eyes were just irritated by mounds of liner and eye shadow.
Was Logan shown sans shirt? Nope! The PR gang didn't even give us a chance to say goodbye to the pecs.
The Contestants
Each voices some variant of the phrases "The pressure is on" and "It would be awful to make it this far and be sent home," which is a bit of a head-scratcher. Hasn't the pressure always been on? In the early episodes, doesn't everyone say how terrible it would be to get auf'd before showing what they can do?
Our designers can barely stand the sight of one another at this point. Althea and Logan bicker about whether her pants look like the jodhpurs that got Malvin canned. (They do, a little.) Irina asks of Christopher's look, "Why is one dress throwing up the other?" Althea accuses Logan, without actually saying it to his face, of copying the zipper collar she created for the Christina Aguilera challenge. During a meal break, she and Irina engage in a low-voiced hate-chat about how much they loathe Logan while shoving food in their mouths, but Althea apparently realizes later that she overreacted. In a talking-head, the fury seems to have passed: "I was a little annoyed, but I personally like how I used it better anyway, so. ..." Later, Irina complains that Althea stole her idea for a voluminous sweater and refuses to help Gordana locate a hook-and-eye.
It's clear Gordana is going to be at the bottom from the moment pictures from her childhood in the former Yugoslavia are flashed on the screen. Those forays into the designers' personal lives are a clear indicator that someone's struggling. Touching back story = weakness.
The Judges
The game of musical chairs continues. Michael Kors is nowhere to be seen, but Nina is in town and cranky as ever. Sitting in for Kors is Season 2's Nick Verreos, whose orange face I'm happy to see again. And as guest judge we have actress Kerry Washington. Her critiques are thoughtful and on point, but she can't match Nick, who's been practicing his zingers. Gordana's black skirt and gray blazer, he says, would look right on "an office worker in Warsaw, Poland." Yikes.
In a heated exchange, Nina and Heidi disagree on Irina's luscious brown outfit, with a brocade dress and oversize cardigan. Nina thinks the dress is too tight, making it look a bit cheap; Heidi would beg to differ. While the exchange was perfectly polite, their faces were chilling. Perhaps the tension was merely an expression of how fed up they were with the crabby designers: Althea and Irina made veiled, passive-aggressive references to the Great Collar and Sweater Idea Theft of ‘09, and Logan committed the fatal error of admitting, before being asked a single question, that his look was "on the brink of costume." Have you learned nothing, Logan? Don't feed the judges their lines!
The Results
Garment of the week: Irina's. I'm a sucker for that warm brown, and the too-snug brocade dress was pretty. Plus, the other five looks were drab, ugly, or both. The fatigue from sleep deprivation, total isolation, and constant demand to come up with new ideas-and the awful challenge of revisiting old looks-is showing on all of them.
Should Althea have won? No, those pants were dreadful. While the judges praised Carol Hannah's little black dress as something "we all could wear," perhaps a dozen people in the world could sport Althea's look without appearing foolish.
Should Logan have been eliminated? While his look wasn't quite as "innovative and out there" as he claimed, Gordana should have gotten the boot for her "sad, drab, and dated" creation, as Heidi said.
Bold prediction for who'll be auf'd next: Gordana. She seems to have given up-just let her go home.
Previous Project Runway Recaps: Week 1, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10
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I’m one of those arrière-garde types who still occasionally flips channels on cable instead of streaming videos on Hulu or YouTube. And being a film-lover, I flip to the Turner Classic Movies channel first. TCM is greater than a cinephile’s wildest dreams. Classics, obscurities, silent films, retrospectives—TCM is like a 24-hour repertory cinema, film school, and archive all under the same unlikely shingle. The awful truth, though, is that I love the idea of TCM more than I love to watch it. Several Thanksgivings ago, TCM devoted an entire day of programming to Andy Hardy films—the white-bread movies that made boy next door Mickey Rooney a top box-office draw during the ’30s and ’40s. I get off on completism as much as the next guy, but an entire day? Ten minutes of Andy Hardy is more than enough. Trust me. So where do I turn? To the obscure heights of Channel 257 on Brooklyn’s Time Warner Cable, where the Fox Movie Channel humbly waits.
If TCM is like a gleaming, impeccably restored movie house, then FMC is a scattershot, haphazardly outfitted video store in a strip mall. The overriding vision of FMC is something like: “Well, we’ve got a lot of time to fill ...” Programming with Fox’s vast back catalog at its disposal, the channel empties the library in gonzo spurts. Bonnie and Clyde goes toe-to-toe with Harvey Keitel and Raquel Welch in Mother, Jugs & Speed; a Martin Ritt curiosity from 1974 (Conrack) leads into Matthew Broderick’s chimp-sympathy weepie, Project X; John Wayne westerns are followed by Hot Shots! Part Deux. Yes, these are actual examples. If you don’t believe me, tune in Wednesday, when FMC will show three rarely screened, vintage ’60s comedies in the daytime, capped by Weekend at Bernie’s during prime time.
In a too-manicured, micro-managed advertising-dominated television landscape, such slipshod programming is positively thrilling. FMC may be the anti-TCM, but it’s also anti anything else on basic cable. It doesn’t show what my demographic, or any demographic, expects. It just sets up shop and lets you wander around inside. There’s no real design or quality control. The word “classic” isn’t invoked in the channel’s name or mission. Fox is just movies, all day long, commercial- and pretension-free.
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We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines, but which headlines? Every week, Brow Beat matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
Oct. 23, 2009: "Dignity"
These Are Their Stories:
Dr. Walter Benning is shot and killed in church. As one of the few doctors who performs legal late-term abortions in New York, Benning had been shot before and was wearing a bulletproof vest. The man who shot him is a loner unaffiliated with any pro-life groups.
This Is the Real Story:
On May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller, described by the Washington Post as "the nation's most prominent provider of controversial late-term abortions," was shot and killed while attending church in Wichita, Kan. He had been shot in both arms in 1993 and sometimes wore a bulletproof vest. Scott Roeder, the man accused of shooting him, is an unaffiliated loner. (Roeder's trial is set to begin in January 2010.)
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Was Martin Heidegger Hitler's most willing executioner or the 20th century's greatest philosopher? Is it possible he was both? Imagine what it takes to answer that question honestly. Heidegger's prose is notoriously difficult. To his critics, wresting clarity from Being and Time is like trying to inhale the proverbial smoke from the mirror. (His admirers reply: Heidegger's prose is difficult because his truth was difficult, as was Kant's, as was Hegel's.) Now add to that the morally repugnant details of Heidegger's biography. Heidegger joined the Nazi party in 1933, and he helped instill Nazism at the University of Freiburg, where he was (not coincidentally) made rector that same year.
When is a reader free to dismiss a difficult writer as an obfuscatory charlatan? To what extent is a work of literature tainted by the total moral failing of its author? I don't pretend to know the answer to these questions. Addressing them strikes me as the better part of a life's work. So I was surprised to discover a critic I admire treat them as not only settled but so settled that only an attitude of ridicule is necessary to dismiss them forever.
Carlin Romano's review-essay on several new books on Heidegger was featured on Arts and Letters Daily late last week and was the most-e-mailed story on the The Chronicle of Higher Education Web site. He begins with what sounds to me like a conclusion:
Overrated in his prime, bizarrely venerated by acolytes even now, the pretentious old Black Forest babbler makes one wonder whether there's a university-press equivalent of wolfsbane, guaranteed to keep philosophical frauds at a distance.
Romano recounts the details of Heidegger's Nazism while assuring the reader that his academic peers regarded him as a fraud and that, over time, he will be seen as nothing more than a punch line. Jokes, Romano believes, are what will eventually do Heidegger in. "His influence," Romano writes "will end only when ... the broader world of intellectuals, recognize that scholarly evidence fingers the scowling proprietor of Heidegger's hut as a buffoon produced by German philosophy's mystical tradition. He should be the butt of jokes, not the subject of dissertations."
One problem: I don't recognize the Heidegger I loved as undergraduate studying philosophy in Romano's jokes. I saw Heidegger then as one of many thinkers who believe humanity took a wrong turn of thought or action that distorted its true nature. Science takes space and time, the framework of all possible reality, and in studying them as formal entities, disenchants them, destroying them forever as home to belief. What if, Heidegger asked, another more primal way of knowing, one that accords with our status as humans—that is, as the only creatures whose being (what am I? why am I here?) is a question—has been hidden by purely rational or instrumental modes of thinking?
Heidegger was born on the border of the Black Forest near the turn of the 20th century, and almost everything about his lived reality was pre-capitalist. He did not live in a city; he was surrounded by woodlands and peasants and horse power in its original sense. He felt a deep affinity for nature and an instinctive revulsion toward cities. The university he taught at was a late-medieval institution, founded by the Hapsburgs. Social intercourse was uninteresting to him, but a dialogue across the millennia, with Aristotle and Epictetus, with Kant and Nietzsche, was his life's vocation. Heidegger believed only the intercession into history of something more powerful than technology could bring modernity to heel. He made a tragic and finally disgusting error in thinking Hitler was that intercession.
Here is what you would not know if you encountered Heidegger only in Romano's review. You would not know that, though no-name colleagues (typically not disinterested judges of peer reputation, as Romano no doubt knows) thought Heidegger was a quack, his philosophy was admired and studied by Edmund Husserl (his mentor), Hannah Arendt (his protégé and lover), and the philosophers Karl Jaspers and Hans-Georg Gadamer. You would not know that almost all of Sartre's existentialism is based directly on Heidegger, that the American uber-liberal and Pragmatist Richard Rorty admired Heidegger deeply—as does the great Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor and as did the pioneering genius of quantum mechanics Werner Heisenberg. You would not know that the poet Paul Celan, whose Jewish parents were exterminated, and whose most powerful poetry commemorates the death camps, took a pilgrimage to visit Heidegger in his Black Forest hut in 1966. The two men shared a love of nature, and of the German romantic poetry of Holderlin and Trakl. (For a moving account of Celan's visit, please read this.)
Here is what you would also not know if you only read Romano's essay: that Arendt—a Jew, of course, who wrote the standard-bearing consideration of totalitarianism and gave us Eichmann in Jerusalem—visited Heidegger after the war, then wrote a parable in her notebook about the encounter, which begins, "There was once a fox who was so utterly without cunning that he not only constantly fell into traps but could not even distinguish a trap from what was not a trap." Arendt, if I read that right, is saying Heidegger was a kind of innocent, a man who should never have never left his hut, his Epictetus and his Nietzsche, to trifle with a world he could not possibly fathom.
This may be letting a Nazi off with a tut-tut. But what are we to make of, not simply a campaign to educate readers as to Heidegger's infamies, but to make sure no one—I mean "make sure" and "no one"—even discusses his work? Karl Popper once said "I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger"; and I am told that the volume Romano is reviewing (I haven't read it but plan to) ends with an appeal to criminalize the teaching of Heidegger in France.
A turn of thought was taken; man repudiated his own essence; and we have lived henceforth as fallen beings. Many thinkers, from Jesus to Blake to the free market utopians, have believed this. Man in his search for mastery is a kind of fool. Many writers, from Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne to Melville, have believed this. Is there something about Heidegger's formulation, with its longing for a return to a premodern way of being, that necessarily sets us on the road to Treblinka?
I don't know the answer. But I never thought the answer to illiberalism was more illiberalism. That the essence of philosophy was that, if a question is thorny or unpleasant, don't ask it, cutting off dissent at the pass with a code of silence, a legal injunction, or if all else fails, a volley of snotty jibes.
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For the "Michael Kors challenge"—so named because the assignment was handed out in Kors' Rodeo Drive boutique—the designers had to choose one of seven possible locations and design a look that "embodies who you are as a designer and also embraces that locale."
Irina won for an outfit fit for an Aspen ski lodge—brown jersey pants; a knit top with three-quarter sleeves, a huge cowl neck, and an open back; and a faux-fur vest. Nicolas was eliminated for a wrapped white shirt and tight gray pants that evoked nothing whatsoever of Greece.
Stats
Number of times Tim Gunn said, "Make it work!": Zero. That phrase is, like, so Bravo!
Number of crying contestants: Christopher is perpetually on the verge of tears, but guest judge Milla Jovovich came closest—she broke down at the very thought of sending someone home.
Logan sex object watch: This week, there were way too many design disasters to waste screen time on a silly subplot.
The Contestants
The judges didn't see Santa Fe in Christopher's ensemble, but they also failed to spot the subconscious inspiration for the white shirt, blue top, and beige skirt that he produced: Snow White. Meanwhile, the contestants turned into the seven dwarfs: Bitchy, Peroxidey, Greasy, Raccoony, Sexy, Self-Deprecating, and Lost.
The Judges
Hallelujah! For the first time since Week 2, the dream team of Klum, Kors, and Garcia reassembled. In the guest spot, actress and designer Milla Jovovich was constructive and informed.
The designers must be physically and creatively exhausted, because many of them sent very basic, uninspired clothes down the runway. And the judges certainly noticed. Nina asked Nicolas, "Why would I want to go into a store and spend my money on this?" Faced with Logan's bland white jeans, tank top, and vest ensemble, Michael Kors declared, "They're clothes. They're not fashion." The same outfit drove Jovovich to declare, "Listen, if this was called Project I Didn't Mind It, he would win."
The Results
Garment of the week: Carol Hannah's Palm Beach look was striking, though I liked that dress even better the first 10 times Uli made it on Season 3.
Should Irina have won? Eh. Her symphony in camel was a very literal interpretation of Aspen luxe, but she produced three well-fitted and impeccably finished location-inspired pieces, which is at least two more than the other contestants managed.
Should Nicolas have been eliminated? For sure. He completely ignored the assignment. Michael Kors was right when he told him, "You got the wrong Greece. [This was] Grease the movie."
Bold prediction for who'll be auf'd next: Christopher. Even with this season's wackadoodle judging, a string of four consecutive bottom-three finishes has got to be considered foreshadowing.
Previous Project Runway Recaps: Week 1, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9
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Slate's pop critic, Jonah Weiner, published an article Wednesday arguing that Creed—a band dismissed by "critical gatekeepers" as "derivative blowhards with a self-righteous Christian agenda"—is severely underrated. This contrarian take has outraged the gatekeepers of conventional wisdom. And even fairly unconventional members of the commentariat, like Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias, have roundly condemned Weiner's—and Slate's—taste. Klein suggested yesterday that Slate "should be burned to the ground," and Yglesias called the take "ridiculous."
Did Weiner's Creed defense also set off a new twitter meme? About 15 hours ago, tweets with the hashtag "slatepitches" started circulating. These tweak the magazine for its contrarian bent, suggesting story ideas like "Suicide: Why it might not actually kill you." Maybe it's contrarian for us to say so, but some of these are quite brilliant. A few of our favorites so far:
brianbeutler: The New York Yankees deserve to be loved, but not for the reasons you think.
gabrielroth: Wings: Better than the Beatles, or just different?
gabrielroth: What's the giraffe's most distinctive feature? Hint: It's not the neck.
JohnJMcG: Hitchens: What all the obituaries about the beloved figure who recently died fail to mention.
Have an idea for a Slate headline? Use the hashtag #slatepitches. Be careful what you wish for!
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Just as we're surrounded by a world of microorganisms—some good, some bad, many imperceptible—our culture is continually under siege by small perversions of the written language. There are errors that help us digest meaning (Boyz n the Hood, Inglourious Basterds), errors that we educate ourselves against (the deli's offering of "sandwichs" could never lead astray a stalwart English major), and errors that, for the most part, go unnoticed (when did you last catch a flubbed subjunctive?). Occasionally, though, disaster strikes. Some of the nastiest errata of our times show up on marquees and in bookstores, burrowing into the innards of an unsuspecting nation. Which crack team of aphasiacs let loose movies with the titles Two Weeks Notice and The Kids Are Alright? What are we to make of Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint's 2007 opus, Come on People?
Recently, while lamenting these and other matters over a pot of coffee and a dish of Weetabix, your culture copy editor flipped open his morning paper and felt the blood drain from his face. Law Abiding Citizen is a new movie starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. It is also—reader, need I really say it?—a grammatical atrocity. Its crime is simple but insidious: no hyphen. Law-Abiding Citizen would have been a movie about good behavior (or, perhaps more likely, an ironic sendup of that conduct). Law Abiding Citizen is a movie about—what? Can law abide a human being? What, exactly, would that look like? Given the movie's vigilante-justice theme, could this be some kind of oblique pun attempt? (Ancillary question: Do oblique pun attempts belong in Jamie Foxx movies?) The ambiguities grow like pathogens across a petri dish. One thing we can be certain of: If any laws are being abided in this action flick, they're not grammatical.
Spot a grammar clunker in the cultural limelight? Send it to copyeditingtheculture@gmail.com.
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In a new Browbeat feature, Slate critics Jody Rosen and Jonah Weiner discuss a recent pop song that has caught their attention. This week, they take on the new single from Shakira.
Jody Rosen: Hi, Jonah. Coming to you live from a cafe in brownstone Brooklyn where, needless to say, some sad-sack indie balladeer is whimpering away on the hi-fi. Hardly optimal conditions for contemplating Shakira's gale-force pop, but I'll do my best.
I'll say right up front that I'm pretty bummed out by "Give It Up to Me," a collaboration with Timbaland, who wrote and produced, and Lil Wayne, who raps a bit. Look, the song is catchy. Nice beat—Timbaland in fine form. Wayne phones in his rhymes but is, as always, endearing.
What depresses me is how un-Shakira—almost anti-Shakira—the song is. I gather "Give It Up to Me" was cobbled together by Epic Records execs who were freaked out about the prospects of Shakira's forthcoming album after the lead single, "She Wolf," tanked. I've heard the album (also called She Wolf), and it's terrific, one of my favorite records of the year. It's Shakira's most blatant overture to Anglo-American audiences—most of the tracks were produced by the Neptunes, with their usual flair for club-pop catchiness. But Shakira co-wrote all the songs, and stamped them with her irrepressible kookiness. She's the weirdest pop diva out there. Take "She Wolf." It's a neo-disco barn-burner about a gal on the prowl at a bar: the same territory, more or less, as "Give It Up to Me." But "She Wolf" is crammed with allusions to Greek mythology and lyrics about coffee machines. Shakira howls like a werewolf; she sings the word "lycanthropy"!
Compare that wackiness with the new song. "Give It Up to Me" is drearily generic—it sounds like a Nelly Furtado song. Now, I happen to like Nelly Furtado, but personality is not her strong suit. Seems to me Timbaland (and Epic) are doing the near impossible here: making Shakira boring.
Jonah Weiner: Awooo, Jody. This song does come off as a weak follow-up to "She Wolf." Thematically, it makes for a nice counterpart, because it introduces a new ravenous appetite to match the She Wolf's: That of Lil Wayne, who has nicknamed himself not just the Rapper Eater but the Pussy Monster (in homage to the Cookie Monster)—these two are hungry. But you're right: "Give It Up To Me" isn't the feast you'd hope for. I like the Timbaland beat, even though I feel I've heard that exact drum track in another song of his. But whatever; it's a great drum track. Wayne's toss-away rhymes delight me as always—just the way he chuckles off a line like, "My flow is a dog, down boy." Remember those boom times when we could expect four Lil Wayne cameos a day?
I guess what ultimately irks me is the same thing that irks you: Shakira's idiosyncrasies, so abundant in the first single (between the odd quasi-malaprops about coffee machines and being a student of the moon) are drained here. Part-and-parcel with that, her assertiveness is drained, and the gender parity is unconvincingly askew: She sounds like the one who gets chewed up and spit out. I guess Shakira has played with themes of submissiveness before, but I suspect that if I, by some fabric-of-time-and-space-rending miracle, found myself in a bedroom with her, I'd be the one who wound up “in a cage,” as she envisions herself here.
J.R.: No offense, but I'm not sure I want to contemplate a Shakira-Weiner coupling—or the apocalyptic scenario that would produce such a coupling. I'm trying to eat breakfast here.
You're right about the drum track. Very close to "Promiscuous," is it not? Timbaland's pretty serious about this Nelly Furtado-ization program. The song does make a couple of perfunctory concessions to Shakira's musical personality, at least. I'm thinking of the orientalist turn the melody takes at the 1:48 mark ("Hey, can we go by walking/ Or do you prefer to fly/ All of the roads are open/ In your mind")—a staple of Shakira’s music. (She’s a Columbian of Lebanese extraction.) But there are 11 songs on the She Wolf album better than this one. And the She Wolf album has 12 songs.
J.W.: Right. That Eastern-scaled interlude aside (a relic of the "Get Ur Freak On" and "Big Pimpin'"-era Timbaland, in a way), the song seems a bit cynical, color-by-numbers in the appeal it’s making to the American pop market. And, to be clear: I'm sure neither of us cares if a song is color-by-numbers and cynical, so long as it still works. This one feels perfunctory, unconvincing, dull. Who could have expected that? Shakira is one weird pop diva, as you write, and she's not the only weirdo here. Both Lil Wayne and Timbaland have highly bizarre ideas about what pop can sound like. This song isn't worthy of them.
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