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Friday, August 18, 2006

The Envelope has been Pushed

Musicians, namely Madonna, have been pushing the envelope for years. From orgasms on stage to having sex with a black Jesus - Hell, back in the day, Elvis' swinging hips fueled controversy. If you give an extrovert the stage, you've given them the world. So it's not surprising to hear of above-mentioned Madonna, performing more upsetting acts on stage.

Last week, she staged a mock crucifixion of herself in Rome.
A mock crucifixion?...

Obviously, Madonna wants attention because I don't know why anyone would do that...does Madonna have a new song about the crucifixion? Last time I knew, her material was shit, unless she is reverting to the classics, if you can bare to call them that. Does she think she's Jesus? If anything, she's a has-been.

But the big story is her repeating the stunt in her upcoming Duesseldorf, Germany concert on Sunday. German prosecutors are threatening to monitor Madonna's weekend concert in Duesseldorf, and if she's dumb enough to pull that stunt again, it's time behind bars for the material girl.

The crucifixion scene, which stirred uproar from religious leaders in Rome earlier this month, features the pop star performing on a mirrored cross, with her hands and feet bound, and drew an estimated 70,000 fans.

I'm kind of curious as to what Madonna, I mean, Mrs. Louise Ciccone-Ritchie because honestly, Madonna, I could care less what you called yourself. Prince/The Performer formally known as Prince/(insert 'Prince' symbol), or Roger Nelson, as was his birth name, pulled the same crap. I have to commend Prince though, for his work with "The Revolution," but I've never been a Madonna fan, so to commend any type of her work, might be considered 'blasphemy' in my book. As I was saying, I'm kind of curious as to what Mrs. Ciccone-Ritchie said to her publicist/manager/ and/or production crew on her Confessions tour, when she first thought up the scheme. (insert faked British accent, or is she doing that still?) "I had a vision last night; something prolific, something existential - of myself as Jesus Christ. As we are performing in Rome, the second motherland of the people, I would like to stage a crucifixion scene during my song...I don't know, we've done a lot for "Like a Prayer" - that comes off as an overkill. I was thinking the scene would be perfect during, "I love New York"...

The fact is, I don't know which song she chose to taint with the stunt. I do know, though, that pushing the envelope is not always an artist's best interest, especially if, by pushing that envelope every single time, push comes to shove. It was tasteless, and for 48, Mrs. Ciccone-Ritchie, you have a lot of growing up to do.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Conclusions

I never liked Myspace the moment it sprang up in everyone's internet history pages. For one thing, everyone I knew hailed it as 'awesome' and 'addictive', as though it had innovative opportunities, but when I finally got around to checking it out, it had nothing to offer on the table for me. A web-based community; I've seen it before! I was lucky enough to find a flow chart on how Myspace has risen to the top.


***http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/03/myspace_mania.html*** Rubel, Steve. "Myspace Mania." Micro Persuasion. March 30, 2006; blog.

It compares Myspace's registry rates to other communities similar to it, like ivillage.com and go.com. I checked out ivillage.com, and, I get the feeling Myspace is not done with it's tranformation. Right now, it looks sophomoric, and it's undeniably user-friendly. ivillage.com is at bust! It's so jam-packed, my experience with it was horrible. So many different screens just to get to another place, I sort of got the "run-around". Go.com is actually an email site; it won't even give you your own space!

Myspace being a centerfold for news stations - is old news. Everybody has heard enough about it's controversy; how sex offenders can access people's identification, how spammers use the site to debauch people, how people are scammed by advertisements clustered on the site's homepage - like the site itself, it offers nothing new.

It's a psychiatrist's wet dream; adolescents have begun using the site as a sort of "escape", in a sense that they are given their own space for them to do whatever they want with. They are offered virtual friendships, and have turned the computer into their own personal playground. The next big question now is, can people turn away from the computer? For a site that is so addictive, could an adolescent stray from it, can anyone be without it, and on that note, is the computer itself addictive? Yes, it is. No longer is it the television that is worrying the experts, the computer has become an essential tool for all ages! And that cock-mockery about how the chat rooms, the blog sites, the games, the file-sharing programs are all to blame is bullshit - take a look at the schools. Every major paper must be typed now-a-days and it's been that way for ages. And I don't know if you're stupid or what the fuck your problem is, but you're being taught to use them because technology is advancing. Some day, in the not so distant future, everything will be computers - wow, I sound as though I were 80.

The future for Myspace is the bottom of the barrel. I remember "Bearshare", I remember "mIRC", the decline of "Napster", the decline of "ivillage", "Skype", this increase in popularity for Myspace is grand and all, but never lasting, just like those other hot places of lore above.

I figured out what Myspace really was. Some programmer (Tom), probably after drinking heavily or smoking a bowl, was fed up with pop-up ads, wanted something universial in the world of chat, wanted something universial in the world of email, wanted something more advanced then Xanga, but wanted the flavor of then-popular XuQa...thought, "Let's put all the crap generated on the internet into one huge site," and sure enough, it sold. With Myspace, you can chat with friends, or just random people off the internet who have a registered site, send bulletins, or new-wave "chain mails" to people on your buddy list (can you say messenger?), smear advertisements anywhere - how 'bout one there, or down there, or in the middle, or one that hovers around, and when you go to click a link somewhere, it sneaks in front of your cursor. Some place where you're not afraid to express yourself photogenically because when I think 60+ million registered members on one site, I never think that maybe one or a couple thousand are also registered sexual deviants.

When VH1 finally, and you know they will, comes up with an "I love the 2k's" or "The New Millennia," when they express their opinions about Myspace, people watching the program will be like, "Huh? Ohhh, right...I LOVED Myspace," emphasis on the word 'LOVED'.

Friday, August 04, 2006