Friday, July 22, 2011

I Can't: Adele's Lyrics...


...Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Shitty Poetry

Welcome to the first (and maybe only) edition of my ‘I Can’t’ series.

First all, let me state that I already hate myself for using the twitticism/popular hash tag “I Can’t.” But, this time, I honest CAN’T.

Don’t get me wrong, I like (tolerate) Adele. She has a fantastic, soulful voice and is a positive role model for plus sized/curvy girls (did I just say that?). She has an awesomely powerful chin butt and a British accent. So, those are the pros.

I cannot and will not, however, praise her song writing as some fans do. My first issue is with the album titles themselves. The debut was ‘19’ and the follow-up is ’21.’ Really? Your age? Way to think outside the box, Adele. That’s about half-a-notch above a self-titled album, which will no doubt be the title of the third CD.

When Adele appeared on the charts with ‘Chasing Pavements’ the incredulity of this phrase nearly made me have a seizure. While I understood what she was trying to say and that she was trying to be clever, it’s just not clever. I can just see the wheels of her 19-year-old brain turning. “I don’t want to use clichés like running or spinning in circles. What can I replace that with? Well, running is kind of like chasing nothing and if I were running, I’d probably be running on pavement. Oh my God! Chasing Pavements! I’m a 19-year-old prodigy!”

“I really like poetry: I’m not very good at reading it, but I love writing it. Singers like Jill Scott and Karen Dalton are amazing; proper poets.”

That’s a quote from Adele. So, these are the “proper” poets?! My whole life I thought Shakespeare, Keats, Browning, Hughes, Angelou, etc were proper poets, but I was wrong. Next, she admits that she’s not good at reading poetry, but she likes it. How do you like something you don’t even read? Songwriters are not poets, they are songwriters. In special cases (Bob Dylan, Curtis Mayfield, Flo Rida), you can strip away the music and read the lyrics on their own, but it is not a poem. It’s a song. That statement is why I have no young friends. Young people are just…stupid.

With ‘21’, Adele has in two years reached that level of maturity that should give her songs more depth, right? Wrong. The songs are still face-value, teenage commentaries that could have been written by Derek Zoolander. All the lyrics boil down to “Remember that time you hurt my feelings? Well, my feelings were hurt.”

Her bad songwriting, though, is not entirely her fault and it does not make her music any less enjoyable. If you are 21 and haven’t been in a war, done heroin or suffered from severe abuse, you simply don’t have the life experience to write deep lyrics. It’s okay. I think it’s a blessing to not have experienced something that made you FUBAR. Her voice his phenomenal so she doesn't need to try so hard or try to be something she's not. Look at Whitney Houston. The deepest she got was believing the children were the future. Didn't take away from the talent, though.

Nothing has happened to Adele other than light heartache (that I know of. I'm not her friggin' biographer). Oh, boo hoo. Some jerk cheated on you. Get over it and stop turning insufferable break up poetry into songs! Your voice and chin are better than that. I don’t know how much Adele knows about the music industry, but there are professionals she can hire to write songs for her. I don’t think Avril Lavigne is busy these days.

Let me conclude with some social commentary. I can’t truly be annoyed with Adele and her lame lyrics because everyone’s lyrics suck these days. We’ve simply run out of things to say. Everything of substance has already been said and done. Also, it takes copious amounts of drugs to write good lyrics. From Coleridge to Winehouse, it helps to be in a state of opiate-induced insanity to reach that "zone." I don't want to see that happen to Adele. She's a good kid.

P.S. I'm at work, so I don't have time to break down all of her lyrics or cite the source of that quote. Google them. Peace!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Five Ways to Tell if you Live in a Bad LA Neighborhood

I know what you’re thinking: If you live in a bad neighborhood, it’s pretty easy to discern. But there are so many many ‘hoods out there. You may think you live in a bad neighborhood because there is no place to get Gelato. Just because your ‘hood is less trendy doesn’t make it dangerous. What you really need to know is if you live in an area that could lead to your untimely death. As someone who’s driven through almost every inch of LA and is still finding new places in which to run redlights, take my advice. Below are the five biggest red flags.

#5 Not within 5 miles of a Trader Joe’s

If you are not within 3 to 5 miles of a t=Trader Joe’s, you could be shot at any moment now. TJ’s does not tolerate bad neighborhoods. They have too many henna tattooed, lip-pierced, homeopathic , but somehow still hot employees to protect. All TJ checkers have a Masters in something (usually filmmaking or philosophy). And since a mind is a terrible thing to waste, Joe will not be spotted in you derelict-filled death hole. This also applies to Whole Foods, but if you’re within 5 miles of a Whole Foods, the goodness of your neighborhood is not up for debate.

#4 No Banks

It’s simple. Criminals, Unregistered immigrants and babies do not have bank accounts. All the money in this community is kept in the homes, No one would dare rob them, however, because even if you got out of the apartment alive, there is no way you’re going to make down the street or out of the neighborhood. It’s the equivalent of attempting to flee a Las Vegas casino with an armful of chips.

#3 No Rush Hour Traffic

If you leave for work at 8am and there is NO traffic back up on the major street, not only do you live in a bad area, you probably live over a portal that leads straight to hell. In normal neighborhoods, people go to work and come from at the same time. Bad places have a higher percentage of people that “work nights.” If you’ve ever come home from a party (in a nice neighborhood) at 3am and EVERYONE in your hood is outside…chillin’…hard…WITH their children, then you need to move immediately. At this point, this is not a game.

#2 A Business Complex with these Businesses Only

For those handful of people in the neighborhood with a “regular” job, if they want to cash their checks, they will either have to opening a bank account at a bank outside of their neighborhood or cash their check at a check cashing facility. There is nothing wrong with doing your banking at one of these establishments. You can get your money quickly and the fees are actually pretty cheap and the money orders are usually free. What IS wrong is when a check cashing business is within the same complex as a liquor store, a 24 hour donuts shop and a Laundromat. This is the most dangerous congregation of businesses of all time. Seemingly harmless, but if you’ve ever run into a drunk bitch eating donuts while she’s wiring money to her recently released boyfriend while her seven-year-old does laundry, then you know it’s NOT harmless.

#1 – Less Sunlight

The number 1 telltale sign that you live in a bad neighborhood – Less Sunlight. Have you ever been driving on a bright, sunny day only to randomly drive through a patch of dull gray out of nowhere? It’s not the pollution. No, the sun has actually abandoned this small piece of the earth. The sunlight would only be wasted as this place has no hope for the future and the sun is not going to be responsible for masking the utter despair that exists there. Save yourself and keep driving. Have you ever seen refugees fleeing Bosnia while the sun was gleaming beautiful rays of sunshine? Exactly.

Bonus tip – Any neighborhood name that includes the word “Heights” but has no visible elevation is a bad neighborhood.