Listen to Kesha, Vote Yes on R, Zapruder > Bad Boys
Sternal Journalists,
Welcome to the first ever Afternoon Edition of the Sternal Journal.
If you live in LA, Vote Yes on R!
In general, you should do your research and not just vote on the fun stuff like who's going to fight for the reigns of the executive branch and steer this country-horse away from that white nationalist bullshit dystopia it's currently sniffing at (fun stuff! Sexy stuff!).
But I'm doing the work for you on this one because it sounds boring ("County Measure R" Yawn!), but it's very important. The 3 things it looks to address are (1) the over-incarceration of people with mental illness, (2) substandard mental health care in jails, and (3) lack of oversight of the sheriff's department.
If you disagree with any of those, you can literally go fuck yourself.
Excuse me, what I meant was:
Everyone on all sides likes to talk about how "blabla" isn't a "blabla issue," it's a mental health issue. And listen, most blablas are actually pretty related to blabla, but mental health is pretty tightly tied to most of these issues, so in this specific case, I think we've found a thing that's easy for everyone to get behind.
The only reason it might not pass is if people are too bored to find out what it is, so *BIG-ASS RAINBOW* Now You Can't Claim Ignorance.
Alright, now for some whiplash into a recommendation:
Go listen to the new Kesha album! Boy, is this thing hot. What I love about it is that Kesha has put out four studio albums.
Her first two are the Kesha that she became a punchline for. In my opinion, they also fuckin' rocked. A lot a people "disagreed" with me (let he or she who has not belted out "BRUSH MY TEETH WITH A BOTTLE OF JACK" on a beer-gooey dance floor cast the first stone).
Then a few years ago, she put out Rainbow. Beautiful, ballad-y. The vocals were there! the songwriting was there! (Two things I, as a true fan, knew she already had). But a lot of haters got on the Kesha train with the mentality that:
"Oh, the bullshit pop-rap! That was for the industry! Now she's doin' it for herself."
I grimble-grumbled my way through this as a Day1er, but I was just happy to have everyone on the train.
But ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to announce that with High Road, Kesha is BACK TO THE RAPPING. THE BALLADS WERE FOR THE INDUSTRY! THE TRASHY BEAUTIFUL POP-RAP IS FOR HER!
But seriously, she brings both strengths. This is what she's been training for. It's her final form. She utters the words, "Don't circumcise my circumstance!" [Editor's note: TIL there is no "z" in circumcise]
[Big caveat to all of this is the story that very prolific songwriter and producer Dr. Luke was, at best abusive, and allegedly way, way worse while working with Kesha for her first two albums, so fuck any part of her discography that she would like to be struck from the record for that shitbag's involvement.
I love pop music, but the fact that someone would become an abusive narcissist because their ego got so big from producing it is horrific, tragic, and embarrassing for him. I don't know, maybe we shouldn't allow a 40-something dude to be churning out love songs from the perspectives of 16-22 year old women just because he's good at Ableton.
tldr: Fuck Dr. Luke. All hail Kesha.]
And finally, a fun tidbit I learned this week:
There's this tragic piece of history called The Zapruder Film. You've maybe seen it. It's the film documentation of the moment JFK was assassinated. Waving, waving, BANG, chaos, horror. That one.
It's wild serendipity that we even have it. This unassuming clothing manufacturer and JFK fanboy Abraham Zapruder brought out his home video camera to film the president's motorcade so he'd have something to show the grandkids.
And the random place he chose to film from just so happened to be the perfect place to capture one of the seminal moments in modern American history.
And ladies and gentlemen, the Zapruder film...
has a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes. And a 7.7 on IMDB.
WHAT?!
Those are ratings reserved for movies that are "fun if you like that sorta thing." Or "It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it."
According to Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, which we all trust most of the time, the Zapruder Film is just a little bit better than Bad Boys for Life (which was actually very fun if you like those kindsa movies).
So, I guess what I'm saying, let's all be careful with how we rate art.
And enjoy the Oscars.
And Vote Yes on R.
Love,
Julian