7:44PM: Hotel Bar, Hyde Park Towers, London, England: In the name of all that is good and holy in Britain, the hotel bar as a buy-one/get-one happy hour, and finally being secure enough in my course of action for the days until I can fly back to New Jersey (I feel a need to distinguish between the new and old Jerseys while in the UK), I feel confident enough in my surroundings and position in life to get suitably drunk. I’ve had two 24 oz. Newcastles and am on my second wonderfully and accordingly misproportioned Grolsch. After this the plan is to find some dinner and then head back to the room for a long night of cursing Eyjafjallajökull without actually pronouncing the word and looking forward to the hopefully more eventful day to come tomorrow.

The bar television has been playing various top 20 video lists since I walked in on this or that music channel. A bunch of hypersexualized cartoonishly made-up Disney-contracted teenage girls surrounded by grown-up dancers and otherwise talentless hacks saved only by their knack with handling modern recording techniques. ProTools. AutoTune. I’ve been doing my best to keep to my headphones. And then I saw an Usher video with one of the Black Eyed Peas guys in it, and every word out of Usher‘s mouth had been run through a processor. I mean, come on. I can see running Fergie through AutoTune, but Usher can actually sing. I’m not a fan of his work, but at least I acknowledge that he has talent. It ain’t broke, in other words. He’s just fine without. Ugh. Wasteful. If I had that kind of talent and some producer douchebag tried to run some pitch correction bullshit on my voice I’d stab him in the eye with the male end of a quarter-inch cable and turn it into a YouTube exclusive. Fuck commercial everything.

It’s also the same videos on each list. I’ve seen the Lady Gaga/Beyonce video four times now and I’m still not the slightest bit attracted to the former (Ms. Knowles, not being shaped like a 10-year-old boy, is considerably more attractive). In some ways, it’s reaffirming to know that even at my ever-advancing age I’m still angry at this kind of shit, as much as I’m able to now acknowledge is has no bearing on me one way or the other. I imagine the day I realize this has stopped offending me will be a sad one indeed. But, perhaps by then I’ll be so knee-deep in John Lee Hooker records that it won’t matter in the first place.

I’m shortly to go round the way to the pasta place and order some spaghetti for takeout. Did I learn my lesson after the “Megadough” pizza last night? Clearly not. Second thing I do when I’m back in NJ is get Italian. I haven’t decided what the first thing is yet, but there are a few strong candidates, who, like the runners for British Prime Minister, have debated for the first time ever on television, much to the excitement of absolutely no one. Long live the apathy.

Tags: London, UK

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Whathaveyou. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.