It May Be the Song of the Summer, But Young Jeezy’s Verse Still Doesn’t Make Sense

There are many great things about Vulture, but their best recurring feature is Umbrella Watch. What track is going to be the Umbrella of the summer (or the next Hey Ya!, the next Crazy in Love , In Da Club…)?

So far, I think the best nominee, despite Vulture’s hate, and the fact that it was constructed using Garage Band samples, is Usher’s “Love In This Club.” Now, it’s not the best blockbuster pop track that’s come out recently, or even the best that’s Vulture has nominated ( that would be Estelle’s American Boy), but it has the advantage of already being a “club banger” and near-totaly ubiquity on both hip-hop and pop radio stations. And like Umbrella or Dangerous in Love, it has the combination of slightly weak pop singer and a legit rapper. And…it’s just a good summer pop song. My only complaint, besides that the entire song is based around Usher asking some girl to “copulate in the middle of a crowded dance floor” is purely semantical. Here’s a bit of Jeezy’s verse:

Have you ever made love to a thug in the club with his sights on?
87 Jeans and a fresh pair of Nikes on
On the couch, on the table, on the bar, or on the floor
You can meet me in the bathroom yeah you know I’m tryna go

I don’t want to get too deep in the linguistic weeds here, but if we’re going to maintain “making love” as distinct from other forms of copulation (banging, knockin boots etc), then it seem like anything done on the bar, table, bar, floor or in the bathroom should be described some other way.

Some Things Remain Great

Fearless prediction:

The Thong Song will be played at high school dances for as long as there are high schools. It’s like Baby Got Back with better songwriting and more class:

Perfect, really.

Obligatory Emily Gould Post

I’m a blogger, so I have to say something about Emily Gould’s ponderous New York Times Magazine essay. Although plenty have been outright critical of this LiveJournal esque, purely personal piece, I though it at least had potential.

After all, there has been a culture shift among people of Gould’s generation (of which I am a younger member) when it comes to comfort with sharing personal information with strangers. But instead of an essay that starts with Gould’s travails at Gawker and then gives us some sort of conclusion or speculation about the larger effect or root causes of oversharing, we get page-after-page describing her panic attacks, relationship with Josh Stein and mean commenters. We don’t really get any insight into the sociology (or pop sociology or anthropology) of being an oversharer. Instead, we get Gould’s redemption story (replace drink too much with overshare and you get James Frey without the lying!), with very little insight into why people share so much and why readers are so fascinated with lives of young bloggers.

On a slightly different note, isn’t it super obvious what the Times is doing? Just by having Emily Gould – blogosphere star! – write something, they’ve guaranteed themselves a ton of traffic and buzz. This isn’t the first time the Times has done this. Remember that weird, anecdotal “blogging kills” article? Sure, there wasn’t any news or even a real trend to report, but they sure got a ton of incoming links!

Because When Angelina Jolie Is Dubbed Over In Russian, All Becomes Awesome

When I first saw the trailer for Wanted - the ridiculous looking comic book adaptation staring James McAvoy as an office drone turned certified badass – I just thought it was dumb. First of all, you can’t shoot bullets and have them follow a curveball-like trajectory. In a world where Barry Zito has one win, I don’t see how it’s even within the realm of comic-book movie possibility that James “Faun” McAvoy could ever be a gun-toting, breakingball bullet slinging badass ( I mean, shit, the fool dies of some lame ass infection in his only military movie). Oh yeah, and McAvoy + Jolie as a romantic pair? I don’t even have to explain how silly that is.

But, in all fairness, the trailer had some genuine action awesomeness. Who among us isn’t excited about Angelina Jolie reverting to badass-chick roles? And the movie seems to have exceptional, CSI/Matrix CGI which I’m a sucker for. And you know what else? It’s rated R, so it also includes James McAvoy pimp slapping a coworker with a keyboard. Do you like seeing keys stained with chump blood? Or Angelina Jolie speaking Russian? Well then please watch the Russian trailer for Wanted.

I should have known, Wanted is directed by Timor Bekmamtevov, the auteur behind the Russian classic Night Watch. So I’m officially revising my opinion of Wanted. As far as summer movies I’m excited for, the list now goes:

Pineapple Express

Kung Fu Panda

Wanted

Hellboy II