Project Mersh, or, Please Kill Me (or, You Choose)

First things first: I've been focusing too much on myself. We should be concerning ourselves with shit like this, with a justice system that allows a retarded man to be imprisoned for over a decade, without a trial, for a murder he never committed.

Are you all giving until it hurts? I gave until it pinched a little, not unlike catching a roll of fat in a zipper. I was beginning to feel a little like Jesus on the cross, being poked at by the Jews (though in this case, it was handcuffs and bedposts, and it was only Krucoff). It's hard to kick against the pricks, people. I didn't give for the children. I gave because I want YM to move up that Top Ten chart and knock those fucking Curbed people down a few spots.
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That's enough social consciousness. I'm outraged on a daily basis, but I concentrate most of that outrage into my obsession with the Commodification of All That Was Once Good. It's my pet trope. Allow me please to channel 1998 and discuss the use of Good Music in TV commercials. In 1993, Subaru made a commercial (starring Jeremy Davies, possibly the only actor in Saving Private Ryan whose death I eagerly awaited) that compared the Impreza to punk rock, therefore appropriating a subculture's oppositional meaning by the hegemonic forces of the commodity form. (Unrelated: How do you pronounce hegemony? Anybody? Is it heh-GAH-mony? I was sick that day in Intro to Deconstructivism.) This was a sort-of genesis.

The Buzzcocks singing about failed love, shilling for Toyota. The Pogues, with a heart full of hate and a lust for vomit, stumping for Cadillac (who, as punishment, should be required to use Shane MacGowan as a fucking spokesman). Iggy selling pretty much everything under the sun with a song he wrote while trying to kick heroin. Jane's Addiction pimping beer with "Mountain Song" (oh, the irony). The Clash. The fucking Clash selling their catalog for every bourgeois car commercial that ever existed. You know, Joe Strummer is one of my idols, and unless someone unearths some Skrewdriver rarities with him on guitar, he'll stay that way, but fucking hell, man: Fender's come out with the Joe Strummer guitar, with a lovingly and thoroughly "distressed" veneer. So authentique. Like those expensive jeans, the ones favored by the douchebag who lives in your building and uses all the washing machines and then leaves for six hours, the one who wears flip flops and addresses strangers as "guy."

The type of person who doesn't even know who the fuck Mike Watt or Pat Smear are. (Also, was Nirvana not a big enough "supergroup" for his taste? Sheesh.)

Today, a show from May 6, 1995, starring a bunch of guys who mostly went on to be in supergroups but, when this recording was made, were just starting to get big. Billed as a Mike Watt show, it also featured Dave Grohl on drums, guitar, and backing vocals; Eddie Vedder on guitar and backing vocals (and lead vocal on “Habit”); Pat Smear on guitar, backing vocals (and lead vocal on ‘Secret Garden’); and William Goldsmith, of Sunny Day Real Estate, (occasionally) The Foo Fighters, and Mike Watt’s band, on drums.

(Hmph-asis mine.)

Little Richard - Royal Crown Hairdressing Commercials