Patriot/Missiles

I love love love listening to AM talk radio. Today, Rush Limbaugh was talking about the "depravity" facing America, and how it can all be traced back to removing God from our lives. He also blames it on people like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, people who seek fame without contributing anything to society (as opposed to other sons and daughters of rich people who seek money without contributing anything to society, he seems to be fine with that). I would counter that people like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian haven't contributed to the decline of the role of God in America as much as they have usurped and filled the void left by the absence of everyone's favorite bearded killer of millions of children a day. We don't need weekly mass to keep the proles in line anymore, we have the Daily Ten.

But the absolute BEST part of his tirade of opinions (talk radio hates facts and numbers, donchaknow) was his argument against global warning. Why doesn't Rush Limbaugh believe in global warming? Because he believes in God. Basically his argument is that if God is all powerful, and humans are insignificant, then there's no way they could destroy an entire planet. And, that's it. That was his argument, before he went on to insult intellectuals and Time magazine. It's good to know we don't have to worry about nuclear weapons anymore. Why should we care if North Korea or Russia or Iraq have nuclear weapons when we know GOD WILL JUST MAGICALLY SAVE US BECAUSE HE LOVES AMERICA?

The whole God argument always boils down to something like this: there must be something more out there. Something bigger than us. A higher power. This comes from the human tendency to believe that we are the highest, most advanced form of life. That's it, game over, sorry ocean life. Humans are the perfect manifestation of the entire universe's existence. Therefore, something must have been responsible for creating such amazing creatures as humans, who kill each other for pieces of paper they attribute conceptual value to. That's where God comes in. We created an all-powerful being to take the credit for creating the greatest, all-powerful force of life on planet Earth. If there's no structured cosmogony, then maybe humans are just another link in the chain.

I desperately hope there's something better out there. Humans are terrible pieces of carbon. I hope we all die out and dinosaurs emerge from the ooze again and find ways to turn our ground up carcasses into fuel for Hummers and private jets for dinosaur movie stars. I hope aliens attack and Will Smith dies instantly in his mansion instead of letting a poor white trash man fly into the center of the alien mothership. There has to be something better out there than me, you, Rush Limbaugh, Paris Hilton, God, money, and talk radio.

This is why it's okay to hate the Beatles.

I'm listening to the breathtakingly forgettable fuzz guitars employed by Tame Impala to transport me back to the carefree, drug-addled era of the 60s that neither I or the band were alive to experience. Things like this annoy the hell out of me. Everything on this recording sounds forced and purposefully enhanced to evoke the hazy wash of songs like "Tomorrow Never Knows." But this is how the Beatles work. Even things they did by accident create whole careers for lesser musicians.

But I also realize that this is what makes certain people love the Beatles, and I typically classify them as "John people." They loved the IDEA of Sgt. Pepper's more than the actual record, and giddily consumed the Yellow Submarine cartoon and all that pseudo-hippie disposable trash culture that the Beatles embodied outside of their music. Ultimately, it resulted in the (accidental?) creation of white popular counterculture. I say "counterculture" because these people seriously believed they were getting a personalized, unique experience that MILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE listening to the Beatles somehow missed. And I say "popular" because, c'mon, it's the fucking Beatles. They were bigger than Jesus. Speaking of, Holden Caulfield was definitely what I'd consider a "John person," viewing the world through pathetic, rose-colored glasses with a longing for childhood innocence, but too lazy to actually implement any action on his part to make his world any better. Dropping out of Pencey Prep and sitting in a hotel to promote peace are just about equal on the scale of stupid ways to stick it to the man. I suspect Mark David Chapman never realized this.

Another major gripe I have with "John people" are that they are inevitably also "Bob Dylan people" or (more recently) "Conor Oberst people." These are people who insist that lyrics are ESSENTIAL to enjoying a song, and will often call boring musical pieces with "deep" lyrics amazing, while dismissing a genuinely well-crafted piece of music with vague or simple lyrics as trite. By this rationale, Death Cab For Cutie is better than James Brown, but we all know the phrase squeezed in between the commas of the sentence is incorrect and/or ridiculous. I know, I know, music is all a matter of taste and opinion, but there's also a difference between music and literature, and "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is not a stellar example of either.

I guess I've always been a "Paul person," even before things like this started to bother me. I never had a favorite Beatle as a kid (again, not alive during the 60's) but my favorite Beatles album when I was 10 still remains my favorite to this day ("A Hard Day's Night"). By all rights, Paul was "the leader" of the band, but that isn't why I respect him. He got shit done and made the trains run on time, and never overtly adopted the rock star persona and cult that John was only too happy to embody. While John was out acting a damn fool with Yoko, it was Paul who wrote a song to cheer up Julian Lennon ("Hey Jude"). When Ringo briefly quit during the recording of the White Album, Paul just manned up and played the drums on "Back in the U.S.S.R." The insane backwards sounding solo on George Harrison's "Taxman?" Again, Paul McCartney.

These are things that probably make a "John person" (or a John Lennon) uncomfortable, and are a contributing factor to why Paul is the least-likable member of the Beatles. Paul didn't play the tortured-artist angle of John, didn't possess the quiet modesty of George, and definitely didn't embody the humble everyman qualities of Ringo. Paul could out-Beatle every member of the Beatles by employing nothing more than sheer musical talent.

A big part of why "John people" enjoy the non-musical aspects (lyrics, rock opera movies, Lady GaGa's career) of popular music is obvious: because they are non-musical people. It lets them enjoy their music without really having to understand it. It's like a friend inviting you in on a cool experience that you couldn't have created on your own. Paul McCartney did not want to be your friend, he'd be bored with you in under a minute. This is why he cultivated weird rivalry/friendships with Brian Wilson and later Michael Jackson. Paul McCartney is the type of genius who knows he is a genius, but does not try to apologize for it or pretend he's a normal person. The rest of us do not like to be reminded of how normal and untalented we are, so we project what we perceive to be our best qualities onto the culture we consume to make up for it. When an artist or musician refuses us the ability to do this, we collectively gnash our teeth for being shut out of the art we so desperately wish we could create.

This is why Inception is so popular: it's a movie that makes normal people feel smart for understanding its concept. It's also why Tame Impala is the perfect soundtrack to your summer spent hunting for cool new music instead of making it.