IN THE THICKE OF THE TWERK

by Andy Nowicki

Folks have reportedly been shocked and shattered by the aesthetic grotesqueries displayed by Miley Cyrus’s full-throttle sexed-up meth-bimbo act at the MTV Video Music Awards last Sunday. But the onstage schtick she stuck in the nation’s face during her performance of the vacuously generic party-anthem We Can’t Stop isn’t anything new; I caught the dubious scent a few days ago when I came across the bizarre video for this inexplicably chart-topping single, which, far from being sexily hedonistic, is downright creepy in its unsparing depiction of youthful degradation. (See also Colin Liddell's useful analysis of the video.)

Gone are the Daisy Duke shorts, the lustrous locks and the winsome eyes of Miley in her Party in the U.S.A. teen-tease phase. Even the smokin’ hot jailbait seductress look of Can’t Be Tamed is nowhere to be seen. What we have here is an entirely different vibe from anything that preceded it in the Miley canon, from Hannah Montana's premiere episode through to the present.

VILE!

by Andy Nowicki

(originally published on May 31, 2012)

In chronicling the ongoing anti-White, anti-male, anti-heteronormative ideological full-court-press of our judicial, media, and governmental overlords, it is all-too easy to find oneself flogged into a perpetual state of spluttering outrage, or thrust towards a inveterate inclination to indulge in gloomy-doomy prognosticatications.

Such reactions are, in a way, understandable. After all, the campaign afoot to criminalize and/or stigmatize the most innocent, healthy, and normal of human impulses – such as the preference for one's own culture, heritage, or traditions – is indeed an outrageous, obnoxious, and nefarious assault on decency. That said, however, one should take care not avoid the snare of becoming an angry, snarling – but ultimately impotent – curmudgeon, compulsively soaking up the latest ridiculousness, blared luridly from various right-wing scandal sheet tabloids, which record all of these malefactions and atrocities with grinning, almost obscene relish.

"EVERYDAY" INNOCENCE

Buddy Holly: a nerdy knight of faith.

by Andy Nowicki

A corrupt age views innocence as an essential absence; that is to say, as a state of being “not guilty.” Since all ages are corrupt, to varying degrees, we never quite apprehend innocence for what it truly is: a positive presence.

Philosophy, after all, teaches that man’s telos is the Good; if this is so, then the condition of innocence can’t simply be dismissively consigned to the silly naivety of childhood, while “knowledge” and “wisdom” get to be associated with an individual’s embracing of the corruption that invariably attends maturity, thus demonstrating his complicity with that which spoils his innocence.

WE HATE BIG BROTHER

                                                        

                                                by Andy Nowicki

At the end of George Orwell’s 1984, hero and would-be revolutionary Winston Smith is tortured brutally by ghoulish government goons at the Ministry of Love. Following this ordeal, his will is utterly broken; he betrays his closest allies as well as himself; moreover, he learns to “love” Big Brother, the awful totalitarian entity who has made his life unbearably miserable. Winston himself gets absolutely nothing out of this bargain except a certain warped peace of mind and a perverse sense that he has in some way “done the right thing”:

COKE AIN'T IT

                           

                                                              

by Andy Nowicki

I’ll admit that I had an immediate, visceral, and startlingly profane reaction to the now notorious Coca-Cola advertisement broadcast during the Super Bowl, as my poor, patient wife can attest.

The commercial, as surely you must know by now, features “America the Beautiful” being sung in various languages while a dippy montage unfolds featuring breakdancing blacks, hijab-adorned Middle Eastern women, yarmulked men, loveably grizzled septagenarian Latino cowboys and adorable urban effeminates (with a few sparse hints of white, seeming-heterosexual suburbanites begrudgingly thrown in as if in afterthought).

TROUBLE IN TWILIGHT

                                                     By Andy Nowicki










If you've walked through a checkout line in a grocery store lately, you've probably seen the earth-shattering, heartbreaking news. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani! Your dreams have been betrayed, your hopes deceived, your spirit horrifically sodomized and left for dead. Your sink to your knees, gasp for air; tears cloud your eyes. You look again... yes, it has happened. Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart are splitsville.

PROPAGANDA OF THE NEED: JOIN OR DIE?

Fresh from the fappening.

by Andy Nowicki

In Mockingjay Part 1, the latest cinematic installment of the futuristic sci-fi dystopian Hunger Games saga, civil unrest in the kingdom of Panem has flamed into full-fledged civil war. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence, duly topful here, unlike in her now quite ubiquitously-ogled homemade modeling portfolio) has been rescued from peril by leaders of a resistance movement intent upon deposing the cruel and ruthless President Coriolanus Snow (a scowling, smirking Donald Sutherland) and his regime of oppression and terror.