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Sunday:
Grey Cup party at Martine’s with a spectacular victory by the Edmonton Eskimos. What an incdedible game! Half the people cheered for Edmonton and half the people cheered for Montreal, so every time one team took the lead the interaction between the two sides was very funny. Dave was totally tense about the game and said he liked the overtime rules (he is American so it was the first time he saw CFL overtime). Go Esks go! In other news: Paul Martin was booed by the crowd during the coin toss and the half time show sucked (more on that below).

Monday:
Long day, Dan got home at 7 and we ate at 7:30. Tired.

Tuesday:
Laundry at Dave and Sanan’s with yummy squash soup and a good move (A Day Without a Mexican).

Wednesday:
Supper from Pushap, Dan had a masterclass at school (where the voice students sing in front of the voice teacher and the other students), then everyone went out to the nearby Lebanese restro for supper (Dan and I just had something to drink as we were still full from curry goodness).

Thursday:
Finally a night off, time to slow down. I decided to cook a roast chicken and get some groceries. Kitchen is a diaster zone due to not being home for two days but I got it under control while the chicken was cooking. Dan studied for a test on Friday which he later found out is postponed. Dan was also sick with the flu and had a fever.

Friday:
We’re so tired we ate ramen noodles for supper! Dan worked on OpenMusic and made a chord randomizer.

Saturday:
Dan is studying for crazy week full of exams next week. I’m procrastinating on finishing the Christmas presents and doing the ironing. We went out to get groceries and found Dan’s mysteriously missing mittens frozen to the ground in front of our apartment! I hate having to go to malls, and malls on a Saturday before Christmas are even worse. Groups of slowly and aimlessly wantering people get in the way and blather about nothing either to themselves or their cohort, while someone plays fricking Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on the flute, live. For goodness sakes! Its enough to trigger a psychotic episode!

So, about the grey cup halftime show…
A jorb not well done.
I have heard some of the songs by the Black Eyed Peas (BEP) on the radio and I haven’t really liked any of them. The “Don’t phuck with my heart” song was just annoying, but the “Lady lumps” one is in another category altogether. The worst part was that I didn’t quite get the context of the “lumps” before seeing the halftime show, during which a very clear and graphic demonstration of exactly what they are was done over, over and over again. BEP girl, I don’t want to see you shake any of your humps or lumps! O my virgin eyes!

If that wasn’t bad enough, it became very clear that these people have no talent. They can’t dance, they can’t sing, (no, they can’t walk either, those who remember Genesis) and they have no stage presence. I have seen high school choirs and garage punk bands who are more talented and less clumsy than these people. And the lyrics for that hump song are absolutely inane. Whoever wrote that song should be forcibly exiled to Nunavut to clear out his or her brain from all that “junk in his trunk”. Wretched.

So my question is, when did we lose the whole female empowerment thing in popular music? I remember being in high school and listening to Lisa Loeb (and yes, I admit it, Alanis Morisette) and the Lillith Fair album was out. Now its all about sex and bling and I have to wonder why the whole “objectifying women” thing is back. Have we actually regressed culturally in 10 years?

My guess is that it is due to a combination of so-called “urban” youth culture and the stupid marketing people in record comapnies. Urban kids want cool music with a good beat and recording companies find people like BEP who have just enough talent and so few standards that they can be put in a sound studio with a crew of sound engineers who bust their asses mixing the music to make them sound good. The group comes up with “edgy” lyrics that are supposed to be all about “urban” culture and then the kids are like “I wanna be a gangsta” and “gimme yo’ bling” and buy the album. The whole thing is artificial! So somewhere along the line, the idea that women are only sex objects gets re-introduced (maybe it was always there; I don’t claim to be very aware of popular music). I guess people like BEP would say they are just telling it like it is, but they are also contributing to the way it is because all those 13 year old girls and boys are hearing this message. I’m sure at least half the kids in Montreal would like the BEP, and I have to say this worries me a bit. What kind of culture will the children of my generation be facing when they grow up? Wait, who am I kidding, people from my generation are not having kids.

Its very strange to be my age. There are various demographic theories and groupings you may or may not subscribe to, but here’s my take on it. I was born just after or on the trailing end of genX during a time when fewer people where having children (some call it “Generation Y” which is so lame I just can’t use it). In the mid to late 1990′s however, lots of so-called baby boomers were having children, leading to a large cohort of children with lots of purchasing power (the so-called echos or perhaps the iGeneration). As is always the case, these children grow up in a different environment and have different values from their parents and precdeeding generations. The end result of all this is I can’t for the life of me understand what is so funny about Spongebob and I can’t tolerate bands like the BEP. When I’m on the bus I feel like an grumpy old fart compared to the kids who wear Juicy or Sean John and are constantly yapping on their cellphones, and who almost never are even aware of the people around them, partly because they’re all listening to BEP on their MP3 players.

So, my grouchy old-person response is to listen to MagnaTune and sometimes Club977 and to not own a TV.

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