RIFF MARKET

Riff Market "if you hate disco, you must hate fags and homos" Edition (no Bol ;) )

"A number of my friends and colleagues dislike Lily Allen-- and nearly all of those detractors are men. Perhaps it should be expected that a willful, precocious female whose characters have little patience for male sexual inadequacy and who threaten to avenge a broken heart by sleeping with their ex's mates would appeal more to women than men, yet the ease with which many brand the singer a bitch or worse is disconcerting.

"And for what? Being a brazen and sharp-witted woman who recorded a breakup album that's breezy, mischievous, and catchy rather than all acoustic-bedded tears and exposed veins? To do the latter would have been both dreadfully boring and sorely out of character for Allen, a savvy 21-year-old Brit whose readymade press stories-- to the UK tabloids she's the "potty-mouthed, pint-sized pop diva, daughter of actor Keith Allen"; to the broadsheets, she's the queen of MySpace, having captured a sizable audience after posting her demos on the social-networking site-- and charming debut LP Alright, Still made her an overnight success at home." --Scott



Except it's the difference between "bitch" and "strong woman" ain't it, conflate at your own self-revealing risk. It's the difference between a nasty IM from an ex and one of those debilitatingly accurate pillowtalk-type talks with someone laying in on you after like six months of you doing something you had no idea you were doing, someone you love, something really fucking bad too. It's the difference between a coat-hanger abortion and a baby choking itself on the umbilical cord. Innie or outie? Neither or both? See, I'm pro-choice.

Because in this world, SnarkTownUSA.net, where words are just you know like things we like say, where the quote real world is decreasingly existent, increasingly cast in this Zion-like role whose even our most minute quips are all accounted for, "meant" (tonight we dance)-- if we are setting up permanent shop here in SnarkTownUSA.net, whose domain is available I repeat available buy now, if we're calling this place home and there's no reason to think we're not already doing that, get this: some nasty words we don't really mean are better than other nasty words we don't really mean.

I mean it. If we're free-passing cruelty/"racy content" on some avant sticks-n-stones shit, we don't need to baby-bathwater the music to champion said avant sticks-n-stones shit, i.e. I condone Allen's gist, I'm glad we have even more music that suggests that sometimes men are assholes and women are bitches and they say things they don't mean and do things they regret and don't get along and powerplay each other to get what they want, etc., etc., just like I'm glad we have a black man named Young Jeezy who talks about cocaine and another black man named Yung Joc who inexplicably spells his name without the "o" and "k". He says it's going down and I take his word. So much white, etc., etc.. My thing is, is it actually a reverse baby-bathwater? I can't tell anymore.

But look this is what the business is. You heard it here first:



EQUALS



And I bet you were waiting for this one weren't you! That's a wrap!

-14 RIFFS