I enjoy a pretty broad range of music. It’s not just severe differences in genre [from Joshua Radin’s “Winter” to “Squeeze Me” by Kraak and Smaak], it’s stuff that spans several generations. From Elvis Presley to The Mamas & The Papas to Marvin Gaye, all can be my go-to depending on the day and my mood. In fact, it’s that appreciation for tunes through the decades that helps me enjoy so much of what’s on the cdza [or collectivecadenza] YouTube channel.
This isn’t a Fame Day post, so I’m not going to regale you all on why it’s so great. What I am going to do, however, is direct you to the very first video I saw by them. It’s called “History of Wooing Men”:
To begin with, I’m not the most unbiased person to be writing about this. “Sk8ter Boi” came out when I was attending a Canadian public school for the first time, and it had a fairly indelible effect on me. My being a fan of Avril Lavigne extended out into high school, and I can still remembering a friend getting me Let Go for my fourteenth birthday. As far as I’m concerned, some of her stuff continues to hold up.
Like most people I liked Under My Skin a fair amount, but wasn’t a huge fan of The Best Damn Thing. Watching the punk-pop star cavort around to the infectious beat felt wrong, like this was some sort of betrayal of who she started as. Of course, people change, and I eventually came around to tracks like “Hot” and “What the Hell”.
Years passed, and eventually she fell off my radar. I noted when she and Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 got a divorce and gawked at her marriage to the widely reviled Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. They recorded a song together and I thought not much of it.
Then I woke up one morning and signed online to a barrage of accusations leveled against her with “racist!” being the common denominator among them. Being fairly invested in this entire thing [as a lapsed Avril Lavigne fan and a person in staunch opposition to racism in any form] I of course had to check out the “Hello Kitty” music video post-haste. I do want to inform you all that I’ve had to watch it several times for the writing of this post and have not enjoyed it once.
Readers, yours truly is not a person to whom the positives of life are either readily apparent or understandable, but even someone as typically dour as myself can’t deny that we are living in a golden age of television.
It’s he-re…
Now I’m not exactly sure why that is- why all of a sudden we seem to have had a jump in quality and quantity of shows. An age thing, perhaps? I considered that, but as much as we could argue that we simply prefer the television shows we had when we were in our 20s, I don’t think my generation is alone in the belief that TV is better now than it was a decade ago.
How are you doing? Just trying to keep things casual and upbeat [and polite, because I am Canadian, after all] before we move on to a subject I’m trying to form an opinion on. You can be sure that if I was even 23% sure of myself this would be a post that confidently projected my opinions as being truths, but alas, here we are.
Last week I came across an article on the AV Club on what you probably know to be one of my favourite shows: Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It concerned one character in particular, Detective Charles Boyle, and how much of the season followed his attempts at wooing fellow officer Rosa Diaz. Now they weren’t, and I’m not, making any comments about workplace romances- the focus was instead on the fact that she was clearly not interested in him.
Alright, so this week’s Fame Day is going to be short, sweet, and, as you’ve probably noticed, late. I unintentionally got behind work last night, and then this morning I had a pseudo-interview. Anyway, the point is that cartoon porn should be kept under wraps.
Really rough segues aside, Bronies Against BullShit is responsible for today’s subject. To be perfectly fair, they’re worthy of a good amount of praise in general, if only because the tumblr exists as “a platform for the brony fandom to call out, critique, support, and analyze itself in a constructive and mature manner.” Places like that need to exist all over the internet, because introspection is a sorely needed quantity around here.
The page, which I’m going to shorten to BAB, and those behind it are the ones who came up with #SafeSearchWrapUp.
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