“Taking Woodstock” opens today. I guess it’s because it’s the 40th anniversary of the concert, or something like that. I don’t know, and I don’t give a crap. I’m gonna just go ahead and say it: There are only about five people on Earth who still care about Woodstock. The rest of us would like it to fade back into history now. Immediately. With no chance of reemergence.
I was sick of Woodstock twenty fucking years ago. Yet every five years or so, there’s a revival of Woodstock recordings and nostalgia that no one fucking asked for. It’s always like, “Really? We’re doing the Woodstock thing AGAIN? Jesus.” Are you excited at all to once again comb through this dusty attic? Fuck and no. Everyone who was at that show is either dead or should be. I get it. It was a happening. Hendrix played the anthem. The Who kicked ass. Santana played two whole songs. That’s all fine and dandy. But let’s take a look at some of the performers from that festival, who far outnumber the Janis Joplins that were in attendance:
Country Joe McDonald
Canned Heat
Incredible String Band
Joan Baez
Ravi Shankar
Country Joe & The Fish
Sha Na Na
Blown away yet? I’m not even talking about the supposedly great bands who were there whose music has become utterly insufferable since the advent of BETTER music, like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Do any of you EVER need to hear a song from that fucking band ever again? A CSNY song has all the energy of a Cleveland Browns mini-camp.
Old 60’s music is about as relevant now as the Glen Miller dogshit my grandparents used to listen to. That’s what CSN is now. It’s grandpa music. It’s elevator music. It’s “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree”. It’s ASS. Nothing by Canned Heat deserves to be immortalized and revisited over and over again. Ever. So please, Woodstock, GO THE FUCK AWAY. Take your rightful place in history’s bin of odds and ends, alongside the 1904 World’s Fair. And to you cancer-ridden baby boomers: stop bludgeoning us all with your dated, shitty, horrible music. Besides, everyone knows the Monterey Pop Festival was better.
So, in honor of that little tirade, let’s banish pop culture moments from the historical record. Pick any moment in the history of popular culture. The advent of a TV show. The release of an album. A tabloid scandal. Anything. We’re playing it fast and loose here. Just try and avoid actual historic events, like 9/11 and such. I’m talking strictly about fluffy stuff: concerts, movies, etc. And please, try and be specific. Don’t pick some all-encompassing thing like “all reality TV shows!” That’s stupid.
Pick one thing, then wait ten picks for the next selection. Anything you pick will be vacated from the history books, as if it were coached by John Calipari. Now go. GO!
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Hi there, just doing some research for my Birkenstock site. Lots of information out there. Looking for something else, but interesting page. Have a great day.
Shrek 1- Great 9.5/10
It doesn’t matter to me if people don’t understand that I have tattoos, because that’s part of the reason I got them. I don’t want to be part of the crowd.
A terrible thing, John Lennon’s murder. That, and the fact that Yoko was about five feet away, and six bullets hit John, and none hit Yoko. I mean, come on! How about a wrist tremor, Chapman? Anything?
I don’t even think she needs to die. How ’bout a flesh wound? In the vocal chords?
As far as the real answer as to what pop culture event needed to be aborted? I’ll go with the reality TV stuff. More than any one event, it made being famous a career goal in and of itself. People no longer needed talent, or drive, to be famous. They just needed to be famous. If someone can exhume Andy Warhol’s body and capture the kinetic energy from his corpse spinning in the coffin, we could power the Eastern Seaboard.
What was John Lennon’s last hit?
The pavement!
Death of John Lennon. Dude had pretty much sqandered his well deserved fame as a brilliant songwriter and devolved into a freak that was completely henpecked by his horrifyingly ugly and untalented wife. He should send Chapman a fruit basket from heaven for saving his legacy.
@T-Bone
Spurlock’s Supersize Me was good to me. I went with this cute little Chinese girl and we watched the entire thing and walked out of the theater, looked at each other and I said “I could really go for some McNuggets right about now.” We went to McDonalds grabbed some McNuggets and supersized cokes and then went home and screwed until the caffiene high wore off.
Otherwise, yes, documentaries suck. Even worse is dealing with the girls who treat those pieces of shit as peer reviewed works and consider any opposition to their views to be a crime against humanity.
Roger and Me.
/Points at film critics
Do you realize what you stupid bastards have done! You let a fat disgusting blob make documentaries important. The truth about 9/11, global warming, national healthcare, fucking penguin walking 500 fucking miles… These were the topics you made me sit through just so I could feel up the hot college girl who want to save the word by watching one documentary at a time.
Fuck you Michael Moore, fuck you with a dildo wrapped in rusty barbed wire!
@boomaga:
heh heh. Heh heh. You said “taint.”
This movement to popped collars, iced hair, and referring to your friends as “Bros” or even worse, “Bra”
AKA the douche movement
Jon & Kate Plus 8. I hate all you dick smoking fucking multiple parents and your little tax write-offs running around TV. Your kids are not fucking cute and you are not fucking examples of perferct parenting next fucking time time use a god damned fucking condom.
The advent of l33tspeak and all the “hilarious” offshoots of intentional internet-y misspellings that gave us shit like LOLcat. My mind will never grasp how the fuck “I can haz cheezburger?” is funny.
@porky: You must have some high standards of what qualifies as passable looks if you think Christopher Cross was ugly. I mean, he wasn’t a looker (and he was a little fat), but I don’t recall any homely or grotesque features.
The internet.
It was going to bring people together – attractive, friendly people who, working from their bright sunshine-drenched breakfast nook, would be emailing, smiling, sending happy animated-GIF greeting cards with their happy, smiling Masai, Eskimo, and astronomy-daydreaming loner kid. Brought to you by TimeWarner-AOL.
Cut to 2009 – we have are /b/, Fark, SA, and whatever this fucking shit forum is – verbal cynical sneers, self-righteous internet He-Men (each with perfect bodies, perfect souls, perfect minds, and without the slightest taint of sin or shame) who bond by venting anger over some trivial peccadillo, some cultural artifact that ultimately and inevitably represents Everything Wrong with the World. Oh, be sure and make it a top 10 list, cut the text into bite-sized chunks underneath linked videos, and represent humble opinion as the indisputable consensus. Don’t get your panties in a wad, fucking whiny fag, just cause you can’t read the clearly marked bounds of prevailing taste and knowing whether you should be bucking or conforming. These walls are ROCK FUCKING SOLID ! And READ MY ALL-CAPS: THOSE WHO WOULD CROSS THIS LINE PISS ME OFF SO MUCH, THEY DESERVE NOTHING LESS THAN DEATH – ACTUAL, PHYSICAL MURDER – YES, AND I, THE ARBITER OF ALL THINGS RIGHT AND WRONG, WILL ADMINISTER THIS FINAL SOLUTION FOR THE ANNOYING AND THEIR PETTY ANNOYANCES
Just in case my point was unclear:
REAL MEN WEAR FUCKING SHOES!
Metrosexual dicksmokes….
How about whatever event or trend that suddenly made it acceptable for GROWN MEN TO WEAR FAGGITY FUCKING FLIP-FLOPS everywhere: downtown, the supermarket, in long pants at the bar at midnight…..etc. etc……
Flip-flops are for the fucking beach.
No one cares how cool, or “kicked-back” or otherwise Jimmy-fucking-Buffettized your dipshit college-aged bare-footed ass is. WEAR SOME GODDAMMNED BIG-BOY SHOES, you pathetic effeminate nincompoops.
I, and many, many others DO NOT want to see your cutesy wittle toesies. Mommy lied: you’re NOT totally adorable.
Dick.
hair metal can go fuck itself
What part of ” Don’t pick some all-encompassing thing like “all reality TV shows!” That’s stupid,” did you not understand, C-student?
“Old 60’s music is about as relevant now as the Glen Miller dogshit my grandparents used to listen to.” -BDD
Hendrix’s “Machine Gun” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVvtIS2YGVI&fmt=18), for one, is just as relevant today as it was back then; same goes for many other songs from that era.
Well, there isn’t much left on the draft board, but I’m gonna go with The Rick Roll. Never gonna get that hemorrhagic shit stain of a music video out of my head.
Dane Cook. FUCK him. He’s not funny, his entire bit consists of racism, rolling around on the stage and making noise.
@ Librarian
Are you serious? You think that country music fans are pillars of virtue? Compared to urban/Blue states, Rural/red states citizens have equal or higher levels of divorce, births out of wedlock, gun violence, abortion, all the crap you said. They pay less in taxes, have similar rates of unemployment and are way more likely to lack health insurance and be less educated.
/Stereotypes are not facts. Do some fucking research before you spout off.
I know reality TV and MTV were listed already(as well as the Tv as a babysitter), but if I may choose something more specific, I would choose:
My Super Sweet Sixteen
when the apes take over(and they will) and find a tape of this among the relics in the cave, they will be embarrassed that they actually took orders from us humans and waited so long to take over
I didn’t see Rogo’s post before I posted. He’s 100% right on.
I’m late to the party, and there’s been alot of great stuff taken, but my picks are somehow still available.
1) Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. 1998 and 1999 would have been VERY different years in America if Bill had kept it in his pants. And his second term in office would have been more successful.
2) The rise of Fred Durst. He, along with Linkin Park and Papa Roach and bands of that ilk destroyed mainstream rock and roll. I’m not sure that rock and roll has ever really recovered since then. Yeah, there’s alot of great stuff underground, but it’s been several years since I’ve been able to listen to my local radio station.
3) Larry The Cable Guy. Really, I’m in favor of getting rid of anything that glorifies being dumb, or even just anything in our culture that implies that being dumb is acceptable in the least.
Someone sort of mentioned it, but…
Larry The Cable Guy
The guy has gotten rich by acting like a white trash stereotype that white trash stereotypes don’t realize is a character. His catchphrases and idiot humor have made stupid people feel good about being retards. Fat fucking survived abortion…
@Dankus- “anti-semitism”… really? “racism, bigotry”… other than David Allen Coe I must’ve missed all of the artists that have caused country music to be “long known for” any of these things you mentioned. You, sir, are a moron.
P.S.- What’s the KKK’s favorite music? ummm… probably gangsta rap, because it reinforces negative stereotypes that their inbred backward asses believe represent an entire race.
Country music’s precipitous fall coincides with the rise of George Jones et al in the early 70s. Country is like any musical genre- once it gets a spark of popularity, soulless record execs see dollar signs and the market gets flooded with shit, making it that much harder to find the good new stuff and turning off people who might otherwise have given it a shot.
The same thing happened to Rap/Hip Hop, Reggae, Blues, R&B, Punk, even Metal and Electronic. Traditional Andean pipe music is next.
the general bitchification of parents over the past 15 or so years, there’s a little dipshit who drives his quad behind my house? why does he need a quad? all he has is a straight path, walk that shit. couple that with parents blaming fast food for the fact they’re too lazy to cook food for their kids and i see kids at Burger king eating chicken Nuggets, apple fries and milk, thats fucking shit, blaming video games and tv for the fact they’re too lazy to raise their own kids. Pisses Me off.
portable video games for kids. want to know why your kids are stupid and dont listen to you. simple. they have no idea how to function in society, because they are never actually immersed in society. anywhere you take your kids they play their fucking games. instead of scanning, and learning about their surroundings (i.e., the world) they are too engulfed in whether mario can race a fucking cart over the beach and beat a turtle, and a monkey named donkey.
Yeah Dankus, Country music listeners are such bad people. What with the steady jobs, few out of wedlock kids and the constant not shooting up and getting high or doing drive bys through the ‘hood, they are America’s number 1 concern. Fuck you and your horrible taste in music. When Rascal Flatts or Kenny Cheseny comes out with a “Cop Killer” or “Fuck the Police” record I’ll get concerned.
THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB. No Britney, no Justin, No x tina. Americas youth would score 50 points higher on their SAT’s if that crap had never been the spring board for those awful people.
Do sports announcers count as pop culture? Well who the fuck cares thats my pick. i hate all these guys that think that they are the autoritay and must teach all us loser viewers. That means you Joe Buck, Theismann, anybody on ESPN, Costas, etc. What they should do is copy what the English Premier League does. They get 2 fans, one for each team, and have them do a “commentary” that basically is a huge shit talking fest. Fucking Hilarious.
Karate Kid. Stops 90% of pop culture references in sports coverage right there.
/actually likes Simmons at times
Carrie Underwood, Rascall Flatts and the rest of the Pop/Country regime. A marketing department assembled these bands wrote their songs and made them famous.
The damage done is that these groups have tricked an entire generation of idiots who otherwise wouldn’t listen to country music into thinking that it’s good music. These brainwashed dopes then buy the CD’s and support the country music industry, long known for it’s anti-semetism, racism, bigotry, and Glen Beck political attitudes. What’s the KKK’s favorite music? YEP.
“that’s what she said”
/have friends that overuse that phrase
Bad Newz kennels
The cell phone and the fact that 99% of the world must have one. Oh you can’t reach me for an hour? Good. I don’t want to be reached. People talking on buses and trains, while they drive, while they walk, while they watch TV – why do people want to talk to each other so much? People lived without cellphones for thousands of years and now people freak out if they have to go 5 minutes without their phone. I want my pager from 1994 back.
Can I say the invention of the blog?
/sacrilege
Pop culture meaning culturally significant events, right? Does the Holocaust count? It happened and it was a pretty big deal. Just because people weren’t really having a good time doesn’t mean it’s not part of popular culture. I take the Holocaust.
/hopes no one tries refuting the Holocaust happened
The Tom Brady draft choice, David Ortiz signing, and Kevin Garnett trade…..fuck you tommy
The Star Wars prequels.
Do over, please.
I’m late to the draft, and everything I would have wanted to select is gone. So I’ll just be a douche and re-draft stuff
1) Barrack Obama pop culture: This actually isn’t taken, so I’ll draft that. It’s not that I hate Obama or anything. In fact, when i heard his speech the night Kerry lost the election to Bush jr, I dubbed him the next president, and therefore way ahead of the Obama bandwagon. However, the fact that people are afraid of criticizing him for his shitty policies, the fact he hasn’t really done fuck all (compared to what he said he’d do), and there are lame looking t-shirts of him out there, makes me wish he wasn’t such a fad.
2) Survivor. I can’t believe this wasn’t picked until near the end. Survivor started it all for this generation’s reality tv.
3) Tribal tattoos on the arm. It’s fucking gay, and doesn’t make you in touch with your inner tribal person.
4) TV used as a babysitter: It started in the late 80′s, and now we have 2 generations (and counting)of really fucking stupid kids with massive egos and attitude problems. Fucking lazy parents.
All Gore becoming an environmentalist and making that movie.
I don’t care if the science is accurate and our children will burn (which is debatable,) if one more english major tries to guilt trip me for eating a cheeseburger or thinking that public transportation is for the poor or intoxicated, I will stab them with a steak knife.
The fucking post-modern, pre-hipster, Alanis Morrisete bastardized definition of the word and concept of “irony” and “ironic”.
The birth of George Lucas.
No Star Wars, Spielberg doing Jaws and cool shit like that, CGI crapfests never invented. Movies are still awesome and have scripts
Tattoos, and specifically, neck tattoos. Ugly shit and plain annoying on your average meth-head who’s in front of you at the supermarket paying for Doritos and Mountain Dew with food stamps. “That’s right, I don’t have money to buy my three illegitimate children nutritious food but I have the money to put a dragon on my neck.”
who ever wrote this is a dumb fuck
@Mang
Second highest ratings on the Ed Sullivan show everl
@disturban and CobraCommander: You guys better play nice out there, or I’ll sick my dog on both your asses
/Old, angry, white, and also too lazy to get the shotgun out
Celebrity and the cult of celebrity. Done much more eloquently here (warning LONG)
http://pajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject/2003/01/20/celebrity/
I wish George Lucas would’ve suffered amnesia in around 1996 and never made Episodes I, II or III. Surprised this lasted that long.
The death of Mitch Hedberg… and subsequent reliance on the standup of Larry The Cable Guy, Dane Cook, Patton Oswalt, and some fucking fatass Mexican who just does comedy about being fat and talking in a chick voice.
@ CobraCommander Your border line illiteracy is only surpassed by your ghetto anger. I am in no way against birth control. I am against parents who push potentially harmful solutions (birth control, or otherwise) without putting in the effort required to make an informed decision. The DEPO reference is from last night’s mailbag. Perhaps you should have someone read it TO you while you drink your Mad Dog tonight.
I am of the opinion that the “fetishitation of celebrities” (to use YOUR PICK, no less), particularly young ones, has driven some of this blind decision making. It is with that knowledge that I attempt to be circumspect in raising my children – of which there are two, not twelve.
/you sucked in “The Rise of Cobra”
@ Yinzer B Says
Great one, but I think they were merely the last of big commercial rap acts who still appreciated the art of hip-hop. The over-commercialization that has bastardized hip-hop was an inevitable once corporate America realized its profitability. As much as I’d like to wax nostalgic about how “real” hip-hop was in the 90s, I’d have to think that the constant game of bling-upmanship would devolve into a Tupac/Little John collaboration with T-Pain singing some god-awful hook about… what do these guy make music about nowadays?
November 4, 2008. There, I said it.
Pick 2 – The Moon Landing, just so fucking people will stop arguing over whether it was real or not.
Bush v. Gore, US Supreme Court, 2000
The night Suttrees was concieved when his mom fucked that hobo
The Kennedy family as some sort of cult. Guess what? Lots of families have been in service to our country since its inception. We don’t have to bow down to just one. We could respect an admire lots of families that have served in government or military with honor. I know, it is crazy.
The internet.
I know I picked too soon, but I am a cook and it’s almost lunch time. Plus, honestly, who else was gonna take that second pick.
I can’t believe nobody has picked the O.J Simpson chase/trial yet. Before him nobody gave a damn what athletes did off the field. Now you can’t watch ESPN for an hour without hearing about things that Vick, Burress, Roethlisberger, etc. are involved with off the field. MICHAEL BEASLEY ROLLED A JOINT OMG! The O.J. circus, IMO, hastened the demise of ESPN and other sports coverage from actually being about sports to merely being tabloid entertainment involving sports stars.
@CobraCommander: Thank you, I had that debate last night with my friend who went so far as to list Young Jeezy as top 5 all time and I couldn’t tell which infuriated me more, Jeezy making the list or the quizzical look on his face when Big L made mine. Perhaps I misspoke when I called him a friend.
Easy now on the cnsY- Neil is a god.
I’ll take CNN, not to start a PolFlaWa, but cursory information isn’t always better than no information (especially with regards to the slaves).
broncos fan is now on my deathlist, one of you conmputer-people get me his address
The Giuliani era in NYC (Minus the whole heroically leading our city and country through the aftermath of 9/11 part): I liked this city alot better when the Times Square area wasn’t full of trendy bars and there were more dives. Plus my neighborhoods (Spanish Harlem & The LES) would have remained full of those beautiful Latina women I am always drafting in other drafts and not trust fund college kids who sit in front of their coffee shops with their ironic t-shirts and emo music.
The invention and popularization of the phrase “The Greatest Generation.”
I have no problem giving props to the people who helped win WWII, thanks for kicking Hitler’s ass and all, but enough already. STFU about how great you all were/are. Because not all of you were/are. Great, that is. There are at least as many assholish old people as there are great ones.
I don’t know if this counts as an “event,” per se, but since it gets repeated so goddam much in any story referencing WWII-era people, I’m counting it.
This is kind of an asshole pick because they’re technically separate events, but I’m going with Tom Cruise’s interviews with Oprah and Matt Lauer. It’s the best publicity boost Scientology has ever received, which is why it needs to be destroyed.
@ John John: You sir, are awesome. Nice pick.
My pick is the publishing of “People” magazine. The fetishitation of celebrities, who they are fucking, what they are wearing, it all began here. This in turn created the appetite for TMZ, and celeb-reality shows, and so on and so on.
The Prohibition.
Unless I missed it: Seinfeld. I really don’t think it was all that funny; some shows I enjoyed. But I don’t need people to recite lines from them to prove how awesome they are.
Video Games.
So my kids wouldn’t be so fat and lazy.
Axl Rose returns to the stage with his GnR cover band at the MTV Awards in 2002.
Five years too late or five years too early? Doesn’t matter, still shouldn’t have happened, at least not like that.
I pick the death of Big L, because then there would be no argument about whether he could have been a top-5 all time MC (which I feel he could have) He either would have or wouldn’t have been in that pantheon, no maybes about it.
survivor. fuck reality shows. i live in reality. i watch tv to escape it for a few hours a day. thanks to that shit we have big brother, amazing race, etc. i know that can all be traced back to real world, but for me it started with survivor.
Subway’s Jared marketing campaign.
Fuck this androgynous fuckface. He’s also made it easier for ignorant fat chicks to become even more fat. They don’t read the fine print on those commercials. Jared’s fat ass would eat 6 inch veggie or turkey subs and then he would exercise. You can’t eat a double steak and cheese while dipping the fucker in ranch, go home and sit on the couch, call your friends to tell them that you’re “on the Subway diet” and expect the same fucking results.
nbc launches “friends” what an overrated piece of garbage show that lasted about 4 seasons too long