Pinkerton's Weblog

Review: Jane's Addiction, "Strays"

For some reason, throughout Perry Farrell's career -- up to and including reviews for Jane's Addiction's new album Strays -- critics have insisted in describing the ropey space case as possessing some sort of androgynous quality. I couldn't tell you which rock critic made the comparison first; all I know is that apparently every other rock critic since was on an impossible last minute deadline when tasked to describe Farrell, and so just flipped to the original review and copied out the description verbatim.

"Farrell pioneered the. . . androgynous gutter-splash posturing that later brought many of his successors fame," raves Guitar World's Alan Di Perna. "Elfin and androgynous," chimes in SPIN from it's "Ten That Matter Most" article. "fronted by skinny, polymorphous Perry Farrell," dribbles the latest issue of Rolling Stone. In fact, just look up the words Perry, Farrell and androgynous in google and watch how many entries come up. You'd be harder pressed to find a description of the singer where it wasn't mentioned.

Can I take the time to deflate this cliche once and for all, please, for the record: wearing lavender pants does not make you androgynous. It makes you gay. To the critics of America: stop insulting women the world over by insinuating they collectively look like a rake-thin mule-faced heroin addict.

To look androgynous means you look indistinguishable sexually as either a man or a women: Dave Foley in a wig looks androgynous. Rosie O'Donnell looks androgynous, even frighteningly so. (Rosie O'donnell first thing in the morning, without the benefit of a shave, is I suspect a different story entirely.)

Perry Farrell, with all due respect to the man as a musical icon, just looks fucking ugly. Perry Farrell is an ugly, ugly man -- you go ahead and choose the angle, lighting conditions and speed at which you will race past him as your conditions. At midnight, viewed from the top of a mountain while zooming around in a nitro-boosted race car, Perry Farrell would be mistaken for a woman like I get mistaken for sober. Any rock critic who could look at Farrell and see female qualities has obviously only heard about women through games of "Telephone" at an all-male retreat, or only date women who've had their faces elongated by hydraulics while machines suck all the estrogen out of them with a bendy straw. Either that or they just date men in lavender pants, fooling no one.

None of this has anything to do with the new Jane's Addiction release Strays, of course, which will rock the shit out your CD player and might even kick your TV around a little if you aren't careful to hide it beforehand. I just wanted to clear up the androgyny thing because it bugs me, and I want critics to stop. I'd also like Jane's guitarist Dave Navarro to get rid of the pointed goatee, tight leather pants and flippant attitude to shirt-wearing that are his trademarks, since I can't look at him without thinking I've somehow wandered into a male strip club in the middle of the devil's set. "Up next, ladies... is it getting HOT in here? Giiiiiive it up for the Grrrreat Deceiver, the LORD of DARKNESS fattttther of ALL LIES, he's here at the Cock Pit all week, give it up forrrr SATTTTTTAN!"

To conclude: New Jane's album, hide your television from the rocking. Perry Farrell, not a woman, an ugly man. Rock critics, hydocephalic. Dave Navarro, put a fucking shirt on and go to your room until you're ready to wear Big People clothes. The album, four stars out of a possible five.

Acceptable Losses

Hey, I just now noticed I've got comments on my entries. That's rocking. Of course, many of them seem to just say "Your life is so boring and I hate you." Yeah, thanks. I already knew that, Inspector Newsflash. Still, I'll make a point to responding to any of the three people who read this who take the time to post a response. My apologies for neglecting them as long as I have.

Anyway, onto my post. I read recently about people camping out in stores waiting to buy their copy of the new Two Towers DVD at precisely midnight, when it went on sale. This strikes me as at best, needlessly excessive, and at worse, evidence that you've made some poor life choices up until this point. I'm as excited as anyone about The Two Towers -- it rules. But come one, hundreds of thousands of copies will be available at every store imaginable the very next day; the need to stay up all night waiting for and watching a film you've already seen before strikes me as a bad page choice on the choose-your-own-adventure we call life.

I freely admit that I'm a geek. But there's a level of geekiness in myself that I'm prepared to accept -- it's like if I was the President and geeky things were civilian casualties. I would consider extended versions of Tolkien movies acceptable losses. Also women and children. I will buy the extended version of The Two Towers and slop it up like spaghetti from the kitchen-vagina of Heaven. That's not the point.

No, my problem isn't with liking geeky things -- and let's be honest, if all of us didn't like at least a few geeky things, would you even be reading a blog about Lord of the Rings DVDs online? -- but with how much you're willing to like them. If you own The Matrix, you're simply enjoying an acceptably geeky thing. If you own The Matrix behind-the-scenes video, The Animatrix and Enter the Matrix, it's possible you've lost a small amount of self respect. If you own a plaster bust of Morpheus:

...then, yes, you've crossed that invisible line, and in doing so have lost unspeakably vast amounts of dignity (and blood, if I catch you talking to it). If you own an Official Trinity Penis Clinger:

...then you -- well, actually, that's kind of funny. Wow, she really looks like a lesbian there, doesn't she? I'd walk around with it on my cock all day, and if anyone asked, I'd just say I fell groin-first into my daughter's Constant Craving KD Lang Goth playset. Heh heh -- man.

Wait, I seem to have strayed off-point.

I guess all I'm saying is, if you want to buy the Two Towers Extended Edition, that's acceptably geeky, and you wont be alone. If you want to watch all 14 hours of the DVD extras in one sitting, you've probably gone outside the bounds of acceptable geekiness by a little. And if you show up at my apartment at 8:00pm dressed like Legolas, and try to convince me to go stand in line for four hours to buy the DVD for a movie I've already seen, that will be available tomorrow without waiting, then yes, you've lost touch with reality. At that point, Legolas will be able to discover the depths of his heightened elf perception firsthand, since I'll be slamming the door in his face without warning, then chucking cutlery at his kneecaps through the mailslot untill he goes away.

Invasion of the Computer Snatchers

After getting confronted with several performance issues with my computer recently — it got to the point where my cursor was moving at the speed of about a letter a second and I had to stop typing for a minute at a time to let it catch up — I went out and downloaded about five different ad, spam and general clean-up applications (or "apps", I suppose, if I wanted to flaunt my technoinfobizspeak). Between the five of them, they uncovered some ungodly number of foreign objects on my computer; something like 600 of them. Just foul, in my humble o.

I now have an interesting device that pops up with a warning every time some evil-minded internet phallus tries to impregnate its ad-tracking seeds on my poor hard drive. Oddly, I find it opens about as often as a pop-up window. Disgraceful, really. I hope somebody figures out a way to make the net profitable somehow soon. All this subterfuge is starting to annoy.