Ed. note: Once again, Stephen King has contributed his keenly observed cultural criticism to the pages of Entertainment Weekly; and once again, in their rush to put out the umpteenth speculative article about Lindsay Lohan’s career, the magazine’s editors were unable to edit King’s essay in time for publication. Brian Raftery’s helpful annotations follow.
In the entertainment business we talk so much — books, music, movies, theater, blah blah blah — that it’s easy to forget why we came to the party in the first place. I’M SURE THE STAFF LOVES THAT YOU GET LIKE $12 PER “BLAH” FOR THIS COLUMN, AND THEN FORGET WHY YOU DO IT I got reminded the other day on a hotel treadmill, of all places. GET OUT. The little TV attached to mine got only four channels, so following the immutable First Law of TV Viewing, known to network execs the world over as LOP (least objectionable programming), I opted for The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Of course I did. AFTER ALL, IT’S WHAT DWIGHT MCDONALD WOULD HAVE DONE! The other choices were Judge Judy, Nancy Grace, and some weird infomercial about scarfing up Chinese herbal remedies and living forever. WASN’T THAT THE PLOT OF THINNER?
It turns out that Ms. DeGeneres has a video segment featuring innocuous and mildly amusing stuff, like babies making faces and cats unscrewing the tops of their food containers with their cute li’l pawsies. I KNOW THESE FOLKSY TURNS-OF-PHRASES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CHARMING, BUT THEY MAKE YOU SOUND LIKE A HOSTESS READING ME THE APPS SPECIALS AT RUBY TUESDAY’S Only on this day there was a clip so striking that I stopped my daily walk to nowhere and just watched, first grinning, then laughing and actually hugging myself with delight.
I checked out a longer version of the video on YouTube. YOU JUST LOSE YOURSELF IN THE RESEARCH, DON’T YOU? It was shot by a high-angle security camera and shows a customer shopping in Best Buy — just an ordinary fortysomething dude dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, and sunglasses. Looks like that male-pattern baldness thing WHAT’S A “MALE-PATTERN BALDNESS THING”? YOU MEAN THAT HE HAS MALE-PATTERN BALDNESS? GOD FORBID YOU JUST SAY THAT. is starting to make itself known in his life. He’s shopping, I guess. Then the clip’s audio kicks in with one of the greatest rock songs of all time: ”Going to a Go-Go,” by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. (No, it’s not on my list. Silly me, I forgot it. MAYBE BECAUSE IT’S NOT REALLY A ROCK SONG?) Shopper dude with the thinning hair starts to move a little. OH YES? Checks out something on the counter of a momentarily unattended checkout station. AND?? DO TELL! It’s of no interest to him, but the music starts to hit him. He pops a hip. And then — great God A’mighty — he starts to dance. Before long he’s really busting moves; I mean this guy is doing his duty and shaking his booty. If your Uncle Stevie is lyin’, he’s dyin’. ASS, CASH, OR GRASS–NO CLICHES RIDE FOR FREE!
For more than a minute the guy is giving it his best there in Best Buy, having the time of his life. MY GOD, THIS IS SOMETHING LIKE 250 WORDS JUST DESCRIBING A YOUTUBE VIDEO. THANK GOD YOU DIDN’T SEE THE CLIP OF THE TWO KITTENS BOXING, OR WE’D BE ON PARAGRAPH TWELVE BY NOW. At the end of the vid, someone comes into the picture and accosts him. It might be store security, sent by the grinches in management to make him stop — the clip ends before that’s clear — but I’d rather believe the two of them ended up dancing side by side, doing the Chorus Line thing. WHAT’S THE “CHORUS LINE THING?” IS IT LIKE THE MALE-PATTERN BALDNESS THING? I know I would have joined him if I’d been there.
The whole deal might have been staged — so many of them are these days, lonelygirl15 being a case in point — but it doesn’t matter. IT DOESN’T MATTER IF IT WAS STAGED? ISN’T THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS COLUMN ABOUT HOW PEOPLE SPONTANEOUSLY REACT TO POP CULTURE? The crazy guy dancing in Best Buy, be he fake or fact, demonstrates the real purpose of these things we write about — to cause a sudden burst of happy emotion, a sudden rush to the head, the feet, and what may be the truest home of joy: a butt that just has to shake its happy self. THIS IS THE MOST ASS-OBSESSED THING I’VE SEEN THAT SINCE THAT WRECKX-N-EFFECT AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
I felt it when I saw Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. I sat there amazed and full of happiness, thinking: “Yeah. This is exactly what I wanted today.” AND I ALSO THOUGHT, “IN TWO YEARS, I WILL USE THIS EXPERIENCE TO PROP UP A COLUMN THAT SEEMINGLY HAS NO CENTRAL ARGUMENT.” I feel it every time I listen to “Jump” by Van Halen or “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” by Judas Priest. I feel it every time I put on my club mix of Lou Bega’s ”Mambo No. 5.” I’M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT’S MORE PAINFUL: READING THIS LAUNDRY LIST ANY FURTHER, OR PUTTING ON A DIAPER AND SITTING ATOP AN EPILEPTIC STEGOSAURUS. I’m sure some of you think that’s silly, but you probably have your own personal joy buzzers OKAY, THE STEGOSAURUS OPTION IS LOOKING REALLY GOOD RIGHT NOW (for a very hip friend of mine who shall go unnamed in this piece, it’s the Dolly Parton version of ”I Will Always Love You”).
It’s easy — maybe too easy — to get caught up in serious discussions of good and bad, DON’T WORRY: I’M PRETTY SURE WE’LL NEVER CATCH YOU IN A SERIOUS DISCUSSION ABOUT ANYTHING. or to grade entertainment the way teachers grade school papers (as EW does, in case you missed it). Those discussions have their place, even though we know in our hearts that all such judgments — even of the humble art produced by the pop culture — are purely subjective. YOU’VE GOT A POINT THERE: OPINIONS SURE ARE SUBJECTIVE And as a veteran grade-grind in my youth, I have no problem with awarding A’s, B’s, and the occasional F to movies, books, and CDs (which is not to say I don’t also have reservations about such drive-by critiques). WAY TO HEDGE. But artsy/intellectual discussions have little to do with how I felt when I saw Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects. This movie made virtually no one’s top 10 list except mine, IT WOULD TAKE 2 SECONDS ON GOOGLE TO FIND OUT THAT’S INCORRECT but I’ll never forget some exuberant (and possibly drunk) moviegoer in the front row shouting: ”This movie KICKS ASS!” I felt the same way. WHY DID YOU FEEL THAT SAME WAY? Because it did. OHHH, NICE REVEAL! The same way Smokey & the Miracles kick it — even in Best Buy.
I’m not talking about guilty pleasures here. Guilty pleasures aren’t even overrated HEH? WHERE DID THIS ALL COME FROM?; the idea is meaningless, an elitist concept invented by smarmy intellectuals with nothing better to do. I’m talking about the pure happiness that strikes like a lightning bolt out of George Strait’s blue clear sky (another sacred occasion of joy for me). It’s the way I feel about The Wire. The way I feel about Forest Whitaker in The Shield, offering Vic Mackey’s ex-wife, Corrine, a stick of gum with that scary-shy, passive-aggressive grin of his. The way I felt about Black Rain, the new Ozzy Osbourne CD. I don’t know if these things are art, and I don’t really care. All I know is that they make me want to laugh and dance in the aisle at Best Buy. MAYBE WE SHOULD RENAME THIS COLUMN “STEPHEN KING: SOMETIMES, I KINDA LIKE STUFF.”
And that’s enough. WAIT FOR IT…WAIT FOR IT…
Because, dammit, that’s what it’s for. AH, NOTHING MAKES AN ARGUMENT MORE DEFINITIVE THAN A WELL-TIMED PARAGRAPH BREAK. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR THE NEXT “POP OF KING,” IN WHICH YOUR AUTHOR DISCOVERS THAT HE CAN GOOGLE HIMSELF.
The Joy of Looking [EW]
Despite all the nonsense, props to King for the Blue Clear Sky reference. That CD, to borrow his words, “kicks ass.”
Thank you, a thousand times thank you.
What do you suppose are the characteristics of a “very hip friend” in Uncle Stevie’s book?
Hey, I know they’re silly, but I actually find these column’s kind of charming in their goofy way. I’d rather read Stephen King’s dorky musings over the shrill pretension wormhole essays of a David Foster Wallace or a Dave Eggers.
And Going to a Go Go comes from a time when rock music actually included songs by black people, so I’d say it was rock. And it is a kick-ass song.
Bravo. It’s not everyday that one is given insight to a person who can read being forced to complete a Stephen King work.
@Lucas Jensen: What I find so excruciating about King’s EW columns is that it’s obvious he pecks them out about 30 minutes before his deadline. He might actually be able to come up with trenchant observations and insightful criticisms if he would do a little research, but instead he just falls back into vague, poorly formed ideas and then he clutters the article up with as many song titles as he can to show that he’s, like, down and with-it and whatnot.
I also find all that “your Uncle Stevie” crap cloying and smarmy.
You know, King’s got more money than God and he still has to take column inches away from some critic who might actually know what the fuck he or she is talking about?
I will say that King’s column is about a thousand times better than “The Joel Stein Show” piece of shit from a few years back.
@J DTZR:
Amen. I don’t think it’s just his column either. I shelled out something ridiculous like $14 for a paperback at the airport a few months ago (unprepared for a long delay). Short stories. Granted, I think it was a SK compilation of stories written over the past 10+ years, but it was just as cutesy, cliche-ridden, and completely over-the-top with pop culture “look at my cool taste in music” indulgence that I didn’t even get past the first story.
And seriously, I used to love his stuff.
@J DTZR: Oh, I agree, but I still like them, if that makes any sense because they are kinda absurd and dashed out. And, honestly, what in the hell is a professional critic these days? Do you think EW would have run another critic on the back page if it wasn’t Stephen King? Doubtful.
I felt it when I saw Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. I sat there amazed and full of happiness, thinking: “Yeah. This is exactly what I wanted today.”
OMG, every last shred of respect I had for him is now completely gone.
War of the Worlds is the only movie in the history of cinema that made me actually, physically ill.
@therichgirlsareweeping: I kinda liked that, too. Man, what’s wrong with me today.
Thank you, Brian, for returning to do another hilarious King post. We sure do miss your cutting wit.