I feel like there used to be a time on the Internet when you couldn’t blink without coming across some twink’s bid for fifteen minutes of viral video celebrity and a lifetime of telling the same story at your local gay bar about the one time you got three million YouTube views from dancing in your mom’s shower to Britney Spears. It was the late 2000s, and everything seemed possible, which is why I don’t understand why this particular homage to Shakira’s “She Wolf” never even broke 100,000 views:
As it’s St. Patrick’s Day, it seemed like a perfectly fair and otherwise rare opportunity to blog about U2, but in my quest to find something that was still appropriately camp, I instead discovered a Finnish a capella group Fork. You know, as one does.
The third most impressive thing I discovered this evening about Fork is that they exist, which unto itself seems like a small victory, though I’m not sure for whom.
The second is the above picture, which is insane. It’s like a dinner theater production of The Matrix, or a portrait of the Four BDSM Horsemen of Conflicting Ideas About What Sexy Looks Like, but then I tell you it’s in fact a promo photo for an a capella group and oops! Your head just f*cking exploded.
The most impressive thing by far, though, is the fact that they performed U2’s “Discotheque”, which I’m pretty sure they meant it without irony:
As someone who has built a blog out of desperate, threadbare references to Showgirls, I’m always thrilled when I come across someone else making a tenuous connection to Nomi Malone and Co. They’re doing Goddess work, really.
So imagine my slackjawed joy when I found this video of Taylor Swift giving Nomi Malone chills in spades. It’s short, sweet, and depending upon your office’s policy on very blurry yet technically bare breasts, arguably NSFW, so kindly remind your boss this is where High Art meets Explosive Journalism, and please watch this Very Important Video after the jump:
Yesterday, Ladyhawke (aka, my favorite synth pop artist, aka, Pip Brown) announced her new album, Wild Things, would be out on June 3rd. Better still, a lyric video for her new single, “A Love Song”, was out now. Naturally, I reacted accordingly.
It’s one thing that her album shares the same name as the greatest erotic noir cinematic trashterpiece of all time, but it’s something else entirely that her sublimely ebullient slice of synth pop single has come in a form reminiscent of my favorite psychedelically insane cat GIF of all time. What I’m trying to say is if every Friday deserves a dance party, this Friday is particularly deserving, and it’s got “A Love Song”:
“I’ll never understand the strange combinations the Internet at times feels compelled to drag together,” said the man who once combined Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter with Rooney Mara’s blunt bangs. My point being, I’m not sure this video of scenes from Ken Russell’s Valentino set to The Strokes’ song “The Modern Age” makes much sense to anybody but its creator, but as inexplicable combinations go, it’s like a peanut butter bacon cheeseburger: inexplicable, yet not unsatisfying. If nothing else, this is a good reminder that Ken Russell made a Rudolph Valentino biopic starring Rudolph Nureyev that looks like my kind of movie (about Classic Hollywood and camp as f*ck).
In case you were under a rock or watching the Westminster Dog Show, the Grammys were on last night, and Lady Gaga took the stage to perform a David Bowie tribute. As a David Bowie tribute, it was…okay, I guess? But as a Vegas-ready tribute to incidental robot piano rigs, a lack of self-editing, and also David Bowie, it was something else! (That something else is ridiculous.)
They joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to perform in the parade, and it’s every bit the joyful tribute expected from New Orleans and befitting of the incomparable David Bowie.
This past December, my roommate requested Drake’s “Hotline Bling” at my office’s holiday party, and the DJ told her he didn’t think the crowd was ready for it. He reads crowds for a living, he explained. He’s a professional. Neither of us was sure what he meant by that, but now that I think about it, I’m more than a little concerned about our #CoplineBling preparedness.
#CoplineBling is the University of Delaware campus police promotional video/parody of “Hotline Bling” that has everything, if your idea of everything includes sweet moves, sexy mascots, and a shameless thirst for the sweet and fickle nectar of internet celebrity. You’re probably ready for it, but here it is anyways:
I’m not saying that this is a passing of the torch, because nobody will replace U2 in my book (or my blog), but I am saying that I’ve been listening to the new Twin Shadow album Eclipse on non-stop repeat and that this is just a very good cover of “With or Without You” that I’ve also been listening to on non-stop repeat. Sure, it doesn’t hurt that he’s super duper dreamy, but I digress. Old obsession, meet new obsession.
Since it’s St. Patrick’s Day, I thought I’d post this clip of the “Ultra Violet (Light My Way)” video content from U2’s Zoo TV tour. This is one of my most favorite U2 eras from my favorite U2 eras, plus I unequivocally adore Edge’s guitar work at the bridge. It isn’t camp, but U2 has long been my other…magnificentobession, so I’d feel remiss not to. Besides, a high school friend told me when I first came out that she knew I was gay because I “liked even 90s U2”, so that’s gotta count for something, right?
My most favorite thing about Ann-Margret (other than, well, everything) is that she’s the rare star whose entire career is a triumph of naive camp. Just look at her, and look at those two dancers behind her, and tell me they’re all not screaming “YASSS, ANN-MARGRET, YASSSSS!”…with their eyes.
Sure, other actresses slip into camp from time to time like it’s a luxuriously beaded chemise, but Ann-Margret is that beaded chemise, plus an abundantly thrusty sexuality I might blame on a low blood sugar, but most Americans insist is just European. Insulin and exotic are only a few letters apart, after all.
Rebel Heart was officially released today, so it’s only appropriate to take a moment and pay tribute to the self-proclaimed unapologetic bitch herself, Madonna. This video has everything: elegance, sophistication, Madonna, a distinct lack of air circulation, British accents, the inability to answer questions, and the unknowable pain of having to suffer journalists and other commoners. Really, you can’t get to where Madonna’s gotten without busting a few balls, and that’s exactly why we love her as much as she loathes hydrangeas.
I get that not everything on this blog is goint to be camp, and Carly Rae Jepsen is definitely not camp, but whatever. This music video for “I Really Like You” is terminally delightful in every way, and that’s good enough for a Sunday post:
Last night, Christina Aguilera went onto The Tonight Show to promote her return to The Voice, and she and Jimmy Fallon played a game of Wheel of Musical Impressions. Her Britney Spears impression is on-point, and her Cher is pretty awesome, too. Christina Aguilera isn’t just the divacamp deserves, but the iconit needs right now.
Much like the tale of Athena as writ for an issue of Twink Fancy, here are two German muscle daddies and their bulldog singing along to U2’s “With or Without You”, a video sprung forth from the imagination of aging queen quietly approaching his twilight appreciation for silken caftans and aged spaetzle.
As Susan Sontag observed, “Camp is the outrageous aestheticism of Sternberg’s six American movies with Dietrich.” It’s also Madonna putting on her finest Marlene Dietrich drag and camping the hell out of a medley of “Like a Virgin” and “Falling in Love Again (Can’t Help It).” So what better way for this corner of the internet to celebra-ate the Queen of Pop’s birthday than with hydrangeas this vintage performance from The Girlie Show?
I think it’s safe to say that our collective Sia love dates back to when her song “Breathe Me” brought all the tears to the finale of Six Feet Under, but I can’t help but feel that our collective Sia love is about to go into overdrive. The video for “Chandelier” as become a viral sensation, and her new album 1000 Forms of Fear is out today AND IT’S GREAT. I may be too old to know what an Arianna Grande is (though if it tastes like a pumpkin spice latte, I’ll make it a Venti), but we’re never too old for the Summer of Sia, and here’s her live performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live of “Elastic Heart” to prove it: (more…)
Call me Lermontov, but Greta Gerwig is so charming that I want her to never stop dancing, ever. She could be like the indie darling Victoria Page, except without that tragic mess with the train. But I digress…
The YouTube Music Awards aired this past Sunday, and I missed them. Mostly because I tend to spend my Sundays in the company of lesbians, but also because I’m an Old who does not like change. Besides, the Crotchety Old Queen Prevention Hotline (1-888-NO-BITCH) stopped taking my calls, so I can’t afford yet another award show leaving me bewildered by the popular zeitgeist. Nope and no thank you! Now fetch me my vegan and gluten-free prune juice!
Anyways, I nevertheless tracked down Arcade Fire’s performance, because when I’m not being an old lesbian, I’m being an old lesbian hipster. Greta Gerwig dances, Spike Jonze directs, and while it might sound like an all-you-can-twee buffet, it’s really quite delightful:
One might imagine that Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” and Nicolas Cage should go together like ice cream sundaes and sausage gravy, yet somehow this works…if your work is in sex nightmares.
And yes, I know I’m the last person on the interwebs to hop on this whole Miley Cyrus thing, but like a twerk monster to the flame of heavy machinery, I just couldn’t resist with this mess of a video. After all, much like a modern-day Oscar Wilde, I have the simplest tastes.
Nobody Puts Baby in a Horner 
