Diddy Bop, Shitty Pop, and the Hitler Youth

I think of a passage from the Stephen King book "Danse Macabre":

"We sat there in our seats like dummies, staring at the manager. He looked nervous and sallow - or perhaps that was only the footlights. We sat wondering what kind of catastrophe could have caused him to stop the movie just as it was reaching that apotheosis of all Saturday matinee shows: 'the good part.' And the way his voice trembled when he spoke did not add to anyone's sense of well-being.

'I want to tell you,' he said in that trembly voice, 'that the Russians have put a space satellite into orbit around earth. They call it... Spootnik.'

This piece of intelligence was greeted by absolute, tomblike silence. We just sat there a theaterful of 1950s kids with crew cuts, whiffle cuts, ponytails, ducktails, crinolines, chinos, jeans with cuffs, Captain Midnight rings; kids who had just discovered Chuck Berry and Little Richard on New York's only black rhythm and blues station, which we could get at night, wavering in and out like a powerful jive language from a distant planet. We were the kids who grew up on Captain Video and Terry and the Pirate. We were the kids who had seen Combat Casey kick the teeth out of North Korean gooks without number in the comic books. We were the kids who saw Richard Carlson catch thousands of commie dirty spies in 'I Led Three Lives'. We were the kids who had ponied up a quarter apiece to watch Hugh Marlowe in 'Earth vs. the Flying Saucers' and got this piece of upsetting news as kind of a nasty bonus.

I remember this very clearly: cutting through that awful dead silence came one shrill voice, whether that of a boy or girl I do not know; a voice that was near tears but that was also full of a frightening anger: 'Oh, go show the movie, you liar!'"

That one line: "Oh, go show the movie, you liar!" somehow sums up everything one will ever need to know about the Herd. This line contains their two best qualities: FEAR and HATRED.

Could you imagine if a theater manager today interrupted Pixar's "Up" to tell the audience that a lone 28 year old in New Jersey refuses to own a cellphone? I would guarantee you that someone from the audience would shout in fear and anger: "Oh, go show the movie, you liar!"

Imagine if I took on the average 18 year old girl as a lover/protege. Imagine me trying to explain to her why it is most important to not own a cellphone. She would regard me the way a 1950s ten year old girl would regard a brutish, hulking, alcoholic child-rapist with hairy arms. I would say "cellphones are bad" and she would say: "Aw, buzz off! Buzz off, crumb-bum! Get lost, creepo! Leemee alone! Lemme alone! Get your meathooks off of me!"

A girl today would not use those words, of course. She would say: "Yo son, step off, dawg!" but the feeling behind the words would be the same. She would consider my criticism of cellphones to be a crime more heinous than the rape and murder of a ten year old child. Raping and killing a small child is forgivable. Refusing to own a cellphone is unforgivable under any circumstances.

Needless to say I would not be able to turn such a young girl into a Nietzschean with nice legs and smooth skin. She is a bovine, a reproducing bovine. Women were always the first to burn witches and heretics. Not that I hate women. The worst are the SS of Conformity, but the best are nobler than the best men.

My problem with kids today is not that they're depraved. They're not depraved enough - at least not in a healthy way. My problem with kids today is not that they're drugged-out. Wrong. If you're lucky you will do a TON of drugs in your younger years. It's not that they're sex-crazed and sexually immoral. It's that they hate sex with a puritanical passion. They have a Will to Robotize sex. And it's not that music today is too loud or too crazy. My problem is that music today is not loud or crazy enough.

Which brings me to...

"Shitty Pop."

When I was a little boy I always used to watch Madonna's "Truth or Dare" movie on illegal Pay-Per-View. Madonna was the ultimate woman, the prototype for real-life crushes. I had many sexual fantasies about Madonna.

In one scene from the "film", Madonna is playing a kinky game of Truth or Dare with her androgynous black/Hispanic dancers. She pulls out her beautiful breasts and one of the dancers says in the lispy, lilting, sing-song dialect of a native Brooklyn African-American hipster dance queer: "Madonna's titties!'

So sometimes I'll be walking around the house and I'll find myself saying those two words - Madonna's titties - in the exact same voice, just for fun. Sometimes I'll find myself saying, in the exact same voice: "Shitty Pop!" and I never knew why. Well, now I know.

For some reason those words - a turd popsicle - were lodged in my unconscious. Why? Well, for one reason and one reason only: To attack P. Diddy and espouse my economic doctrine on blogspot.

Diddy recently came out with a song called "Diddy Bop". What does that rhyme with?

P. Diddy is unoriginal and untalented. He's the king of uns and uns are negative.

P. Diddy likes to rap about MONEY! Wow! Well, that's new! Very original!

Why are rappers so obsessed with money? What's most important is NOT making money. It's very important to remain at a moderate (but not severe) level of poverty throughout life. One should have just enough for a comfortable survival and a few material luxuries.

The problem with being rich is that the entire world becomes a strip club. You can have all the women (or men) that you want, but it is impossible to know if any of them like you for you. Right now I subsist at such a level of poverty that I know that anyone who likes me must really like ME! Being broke and having sex with two girls at the same time in a shack is better than being rich and having sex with 2,000 girls in a specially-built orgy room. Who would want a world filled with six billion fawning prostitutes? Spare me from ever being rich. If I ever "make it" I'll give my money away hand over fist. Wealth is a curse I would not wish on my worst enemy. This philosophy, of course, flies in the face of our society's most deeply-held values.

Rap, which was born from a "disenfranchised" community has become the biggest, strongest, hippest, and most popular supporter of the same system that "disenfranchised" the black community in the first place. That being said, Chuck Berry is much more "obscene" than someone like Ludacris. Subtletly is what raises the hairs on the back of one's neck and sends chills up spines. Luda is a gynecological exam - nothing obscene about that. To go back to the Stephen King passage, of course.

I want to see a rapper who raps about NOT making money. THAT would be ORIGINAL.

But P. Diddy has been just about everything but original.

Lenny Bruce was a genius because he mocked what was sacred in his time: Christianity.

I am a genius because I mock what is sacred in our time: chatter.