Ugly People Have Talent!

So there's a show "America's Got Talent" which is apparently an analogue of the original british show of roughly the same (geopolitically-adjusted) name. There is currently a YouTube video going around with a clip from the British show of a 47 year old woman who sings "I Dream a Dream" from Les Mis, or something like that. 

Now, if you've watched the video you can agree: this lady is talented. She gives a great performance (in a very pressure-filled situation, no less) and is rightly applauded. The thing that is absolutely infuriating to me about this is the reaction most people seem to have about this clip which is roughly: awww, bless her heart! 

You're saying: 'gee, thats pretty uncharitable of you to be so upset at such a nice sentiment.' You say gee. Who still says that?

What makes me angry about the clip and the reaction to it are basically that the whole presentation of her performance is made with the barely-concealed subtext: this frumpy unibrow has absolutely no chance of being even remotely talented. This is done, of course, so that its a great big saccharine feel-good moment when she does in fact display her not inconsiderable talent. 

This is one of the biggest and most devastating lies in entertainment. This is why we follow with baited breath the every move of completely talentless starlets who happen to have 1. a great rack, or whatever their claim to physical fame is 2. great producers. This is why people are up in arms about Britney Spears "If you seek Amy" when that joke is a hundred years old (Literally--read Ulysses), and is not even the first time that trope has appeared in music. The point is so completely and obviously true that it almost isn't worth making explicit, but at the same time, we so rarely seem to really understand that: physical appearance has almost nothing to do with talent, especially as a musician. 

Oh yes, yes, you say: we know all that. So true!  And yet the response to the clip on YouTube is permeated with the very same subtext: Frowsy Spinster Shockingly Not A Worthless Human Being! Just look at whoever the heck the blonde-haired judge is. She's literally gaping at the woman on stage. Now, part of that is certainly because she's Making Good TV,  but again: she's most likely genuinely surprised that this person can sing, or do anything for that matter. And a lot of the responses to the video seem to run in the same: "Don't Judge a Book By its Cover" sort of surprise.

The point is that there's no visibly obvious reason that she shouldn't be talented. Talent makes no such demands. All it demands is persistent hard-work and, usually, some training from people ahead of you in your craft. Most of the beautiful people in music are not good musicians. This is not to say that you can't be both, but I defy anyone to make the argument for Britney Spears (the nuclear Ur-case in all of these arguments, I know) being a competent musician by ANY standards. Britney Spears does not exist without a modern recording studio. Just wouldn't happen. So all this hoopla over this woman appears to me to be blown out of proportion simply because she is the 'novel' case of a talented singer who isn't famous (read: beautiful). The world is full of them. I'm not saying that she shouldn't have gotten the applause. My argument is not that she's not talented and doesn't deserve the appreciation she got, my point is that she's not the exception, she's the rule. 

If Hollywood or the music industry were truly a meritocracy, they'd both be a whole lot uglier on average, but we'd probably get better movies and a would definitely get a TON of amazing music from average looking people who have taken the time to develop a craft, and who are passionate about whatever it is that they do in music. (These people are still out there, but in a meritocratic recording-industry world, they'd have the backing of major labels--which by now is almost a moot point anyway. I digress.) This isn't a genre-bashing argument per-se, although the phenomenon of the pop-star has become so totally-image driven that its kind of hard to imagine music of that ilk being too popular if divorced from an attractive package in which to sell it. I'd take Ella Fitzgerald, bloated and diabetic, over Miley Cyrus every day of the week. 

So for Susan Doyle, the less than runway-model looking vocalist: appreciate what she does (and does well), but don't be so dumbfounded that she can do it. 

A workout update!

Still not physically fit. 

It is nice to be less uncomfortable at the gym though. I've made a separate peace with the muscle-bound lords of the gym. After gasping through some row exercises a few days ago, I was privileged to overhear a story by two enormous dudes at the station directly opposite mine. Enormous Dude #1 (hereinafter ED1, because who doesn't love a left handed 'penis-joke/insult'?) was telling Enormous Dude #2 (hereinafter ED2, because ditto) about one of his (ED1's) acquaintances (ED3). Here are the salient points of the anecdote:

ED3 was/is a body builder

He competed in a certain weight class (I didn't catch this. I was exercising, after all)

One time, he weighed in a half-pound above the cut-off for his weight class.

To rectify this, he spent an hour spitting into a bucket. 

And just like that...it was no longer important for me to ever join the ranks of the ED. Again, we're shooting at least for vaguely flabby, but not visibly squishy. 

Speaking of visibly squishy, lets relate an embarrassing workout story! Part of the gym experience is being able to totally ogle yourself as you chisel and sculpt, thanks to the mirrors all around the perimeter of the gym. For those of us who are still closer to the lump of clay than the finished pot, this is an opportunity to notice horrendous, soul-deflating things about how our bodies look in the clothes we use to workout. 

Now I wear old t-shirts to the gym. I am not now, nor do I ever anticipate being, someone who can straight-facedly wear Under-Armour or sleeveless T-shirts (either naturally or artificially sleeveless), etc. This means that my old T-shirts that I wear to the gym are all shirts that I don't really wear anymore because either they're 1) dirty or, 2) too small. Today was a slightly-too-small t-shirt day, unfortunately, because that gives rise to the uniquely flabby-waisted experience of: The Face in the T-Shirt. 

The Face in the T-Shirt is much like The Man in the Moon, a face born of suggestive features and suggestible viewers. Combine a squishy spare-tire, with a gradually in-cratering belly-button, with small but sweaty man-boobs. Stretch a t-shirt over this and you have: a face. Two sweaty eyeballs, a vaguely nose-like indent at the break between chest and stomach, and a round, somewhat priggish mouth. The best station at which to observe this disgusting yet compelling phenomenon, is definitely the back-exercise machine, wherein you sit down, hunched over with a padded bar on your back, and then lurch (I don't think lurch is the clinical word. its what I do.) backwards. This gives your Face in the T-Shirt the chance to progress three sets of ten times through a pretty staggering range of emotion, from fear/surprise at full extension, to anger/disapproval, as you squelch back to the starting position, depending on your own physiognomy/t-shirt combination. This is why I'll never ever be able to wear the super tight, extra muscle support 'under-armour' et. al. to the gym. The Face-in-the-Armour would totally belie any claims to physical fitness my outfit would be making. It would sound like this as I exercised: "Whuaaaaa? I DISAPPROVE! Whuaaaaaaa?!? ITS ALL A LIE! Whuuuuuuu?!.... etc. x10 x3. I need more t-shirts. and probably more self-esteem. I think this gym-going could be exhausting my supply of both. BUT I PERSIST!

Girl from Ipanema

I heard the Getz/Gilberto version of Girl from Ipanema for the first time in awhile the other day. A few thoughts: 

Astrud Gilberto's melancholy, haunting, and consistently flat voice would never be allowed in today's AutoTune world. What a loss that would be.

Why do women so frequently sing "The --Boy-- from Ipanema" instead of the original lyrics? I think it works so much better and is so much more complicated than its elevator-music status when sung by a woman as the 'girl' from Ipanema. I've always imagined this to be about a girl who loves a boy who thinks he loves this mythical, totally unattainable "girl from Ipanema (GFI)" who apparently everyone who is young and lovely is also in love with. "She looks straight ahead not at he..." So probably this GFI knows just exactly how attractive she is and enjoys walking by the sea so as to attract all the attention which she can then ignore. And then there's this girl who is probably every bit as beautiful in her own way, but who is probably invisible to this poor sap because he sees her everyday. And so this second girl who loves the starstruck boy is heartbroken, because she feels badly that he is so desperately lovesick and at the same time wishes he would redirect his attention to someone who will return all the enormous capacity for love this sucker apparently has. And when Astrud Gilberto sings it, thats what it sounds like to me. That she observes this boy observing this girl and she acknowledges how beautiful the GFI is, and is maybe even a tiny tiny bit sweetly sardonic in describing her. The bridge is so much more legato and sustained than the back and forth of the A sections, and thats when she's being wistful about this moron she's had the misfortune to fall in love with. 

That just seems like a heck of a much more compelling plot for an otherwise unremarkable bossa nova tune, and one that I think would go a long way towards rescuing that tune from the banality its been reduced to. And then men could still sing it as the Girl from Ipanema, and the storyline might be one of reminiscence about his younger self, and how captivated he was by this stunning beauty. Like he's a younger boy, and she's just enough older that he's totally and completely invisible to her by virtue of his age, and he's in love anyway. 

Anyway, I still love the Gilberto/Getz version of that tune, and wish more people could play it honestly and without all the accreted irony and kitsch, and also without dumbing down the interpretation of the lyrics. So few tunes tell compelling stories and I think this could actually be one of them. 

Two Weeks...

The only visibly noticeable result of my working out thus far is the continuing deterioration of my basic functioning skills, as my woefully unprepared body hearkens back to the couch in the only way it has left: by falling apart piece by piece. 

Always darkest before the dawn, which I'm hoping starts peeking its way out around the three week mark. Seriously. Speedos by June, I'm thinking. Right?

Since Beginning a Fitness Regimen...

Things I can no longer do: raise hands above head, without pain

Putative signs of my increased physical fitness: raising hands above head causes pain.

Its a scam.

A week

Tomorrow marks a week of working out. By rough calculations, I have become at least three pounds heavier and five pounds less strong. But I haven't fallen off of any of the equipment yet. A Pyrrhic victory?

Bible Character + US State = Awesome band names

This could potentially be a fun game. Like all of my brilliant ideas, I only have one actual concrete example to offer, but it seems like there ought to be more, like in my "Apocryphal Specialty Pizza" series (Echeesiasticus, by the way). The rules are as stated above. Some combination of Biblical character combined in some way with a US State name, to produce a super hip folk band name. My name is:

Oklamoses and the Nebraskivites

Game on.