LOSE YOURSELF

where am i?

really, though, Lose Yourself is my favorite thing he's done in a while. i won't bother rehashing what i said in another thread. but thumbs up.

He had so much promise, and chose to use his powers for evil rather than good...by making egocentric bland-ass one-dimensional diatribes against a world that eats up every single bit of the act.

But then, the guy comes along with this new stuff, like "8 Mile" and "Lose Yourself", and I've gotta say, I'm finally beginning to come back around.

I always felt he was a gifted "spitter" and writer, but that he was doing things in a very negative and counter-productive way. With this new stuff, it seems he may be stepping away from The Dark Side, and I couldn't be happier. Now, if he can just maintain the positive message thing and stop being such an angry goofball...

Personally I think he'd be better for treading further into The Dark Side, given that his most memorable track for me was "Kim" (an anomaly I'll concede but a great one). All astounding lyrical schemes aside, the best bit about Eminem is the anger/evil/diatribe turmoil isn't it? He gets a little too comfy in playing up his persona, sure, but subjecting it to moral judgement is really missing the point. Anyway, I don't hear the uplifting message in "Lose Yourself", I hear something like self-detonation in the face of nihilism - let passion/music/thebeat consume you, who cares if it leaves your entrails all over the stage you aren't looking back anyway.

great point!

over-rated boring homogenized mainstream suburban literature that appeals to soccer dads

vs.

over-rated boring homogenized mainstream suburban <wigga>music</wigga> that is shocking only to soccer moms and their teen boygirls (and my queen mary neighbor who listened almost exclusively to ultra-cheeze diva house until he bought this soundtrack last week).

COME TO ME WITH ALL OF YOUR FANGS DRAWN, I HAVE NEVER ONCE BEEN MORE READY.

dude.

Gygax: exactly whose kids were playing soccer in 1960?

AYSO was formed in 1964 in order to consolidate the emerging and competing soccer leagues in suburban Los Angeles.

Assuming the players on these teams were actual mortal humans, then we can accept that they had fathers. Let's also assume that most of these fathers had at least one eye (complete blindness only afflicts .7% of the human population). In 1972, 6.2% of the population of California was deemed illiterate by California Literacy, Inc. (f. 1956). Do you see what I'm getting at here:

I'm famous. Please don't email me.

yet let me remind you what your question was:

Gygax: exactly whose kids were playing soccer in 1960?

all i'm saying is that updike and eminem share quite a few qualities, i remembered your point from a few weeks ago and chose to comment on it indirectly. if you disagree, just say so and move on. let's agree to disagree.

Sure, Rabbit, Run came out in 1960, but it was the decades after (shit, wasn't there one a few years ago)?) that Updike milked clung to this theme/character. You seem to be disbelieving of either:

A) the concept of "a soccer dad"
B) the fact that a father of a soccer player would be a stranger to John Updike

or maybe both? i don't know. i'm trying to fold socks. that's my priority right now. have a nice weeknd.

I find this interesting, which is why I said to Gygax (I thought fairly politely) that "I can't tell whether you're saying the connection is an apt one or not" -- because he fashions this crude club out of "lame old people like Updike" and uses that to beat 8 Mile, and I'm curious as to whether he has any actual thoughts on the reference beyond that. If that was just his meaningless pseudo-clever way of saying Updike is lame and 8 Mile is lame, which is the sense I'm getting, then, well, fine, whatever.

Ooohhh.. slay the canon.

Anyway Gygax have you even read any of the Rabbit books?

I mean do you have a fucking clue how they are narrated and what they are even about? (clue: they're sympathetic yet powerful critiques of the life of a upper middle-class white dude. another clue: Roth played great havoc with Rabbit when he transplanted him as "The Swede" for American Pastorial)

And let me get yr. demographix judgement criteria right -- liked by suburban teens is bad, liked by middle-class white dudes is bad... appeal to a large demographic is bad... quit bringin' the hate!

I saw 8 mile with a nearly all black and hispanic audience on the Southside and their main complaint was that there was too much film and too little rap. And haha people were like "I could have just downloaded the freestyles" -- I can just feel the stereotypes crumbling here.

Have you seen 8 mile either gygax? Because if you have you're just acting ignorant for the sake of it. Oooh... how underground.

I like Redman.

In re: Updike & Soccer Dads, the type existed prior to the term, n'est-pas? So we can use the term, now quite useful, to refer to a type that existed before it had a convenient & memorable name?

Eminem/Updike a fairly interesting comparison I think, even if I find Updike awful dull. Eminem/Gass's "The Tunnel" perhaps more generative but nobody should have to read "The Tunnel" unless they really wanna give their inner masochists the once-over.

more evidence for my theory is that nate dogg is the musical multiplier

I'm surprised ep liked "Lose Yourself." It seems like it has a very obvious rock-like build to it, kinda like Nas's "one mic," which seems to be the better of the two.

updike's appeal (and rabbit character) spans 3 decades of inclining popularity (esp. with the soccer dad crowd). if you think that updike was only relevant in 1960 that's one thing... but never was my point "that the original Rabbit was only shocking to the middle-aged of 1960"...

my point was that updike's (including but extending before and beyond rabbit in the first novel) appeal as a controversial (expletive)-stirrer is as shocking as eminem's "rhymes", as shocking as the film American Beauty...

my apologies for the unclarity, i treat this forum as a very informal place to talk about music, I apologize if i stepped on your feet with regards to your analogy... i meant to digress, not to expand upon yours.

Now you're just flat-out lying, Gygax: your original post displayed no awareness whatsoever that Updike had ever been anything more than cushy mid-list fiction for middle-aged gin-and-tonic sippers, which is why I called it "ahistorical." And, as I just said one post back, even if the above was your point it's a completely meaningless one. So you don't find either of them shocking: congratulations! Neither does anyone else here, by the look of it.

(I'm also irritated by the scare quotes around "rhymes" -- do "shot" and "not" not actually rhyme anymore?)

what a geeeezah!

thank you.

Thank you, this statement will serve as a useful ipecac should I need one in future.

eminem : "shocking" music :: updike : "shocking" literature

it's really not that complicated.

you may no notice (then again you may not as you're reading SOOOOOOO much more into this then what is written) NO mention of time-reference with regard to updike's relevance (nor eminem's for that matter) in my posts...

if you'd like to continue to put words in my mouth, sure why not... kinda fun, kinda sassy!

Ned's post reminded me of Roger Ebert referring to Eminem's music as 'angry and humorless'.

In response to Ebert, takes one to know one.

Then again, his screenplay for Russ Meyer was pretty funny.

For the record - Ebert liked 8 Mile.

Whoah...

gygax : eminem :: sterling : gygax
gygax : eminem :: f. barthelme : d. barthelme

I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my coffee.

A taste of his hyperbole: "It's Eminem's greatest single recording, but it's more than that. As with Jerry Lee Lewis' "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," Aretha Franklin's "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)," the Miracles' "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage," Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message," the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" or Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," it's one of those moments in pop music that throws off everything around it, setting a new standard, offering a new challenge, proving that, now, you, whoever you are, can say anything, and with a beauty no one can gainsay. That's what's happening here. The cutting contest at the end of "8 Mile" is a small thing compared to the cutting contest "Lose Yourself" throws down on pop music as such."

lunacy.

Greil's comments especially bother me since I think "My Name Is" is a much better example of what Greil claims to be hungry for in pop. It was the first real flip-of-the-bird to mainstream pop that I credit for much of the cynicism young people have towards ALL pop music. For ages Greil has claimed to desire piss-off punk value-challenging (anyone remember his tripe in Esquire a decade ago on the subject) but he decides to praise Eminem now that he's become a Horatio Alger/Purple Rain kid-with-a-dream rather than a fuck-all punk.

Grand final: Michael Chabon beats Curtis Hanson.

My reading is that Marcus is not responding to anything as simple as Em becoming a "kid-with-a-dream" - it's more to do with the "resentment and desire" (and beats), all of which were present in Jerry Lee and Nirvana. Marcus only goes this overboard with praise every five years or so and he's got a pretty good record of picking 'em, and I'm just about with him on this one, which is as much as he can hope for.

Banger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cabWYgwn82Q