Listen, it's been a dark Sunday and sometimes a little levity is necessary. At a Miami-Virginia game on Saturday, a dude who was super amped about football, Journey, and geese (some might call it the holy trinity of Getting Amped), used his plastic friend as a microphone. What's that you say? You are feeling inadequate at his skill?
Rock of Ages is so stacked with clichés and tropes that it feels like a comprehensive overview of American mythology, as dictated by pop culture. Set in a backdrop of L.A. that looks very much like a backdrop, the film tells a story about an aging rock star attempting to resurrect his career. By the end of the film, he's done so, courtesy of American pop culture's most relevant song of the past decade — Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." As sung by Tom Cruise.
Tareq blames everything on Journey, then nuzzles a whoremonger and poses sexily in bed. Naomi Campbell blames her bad personality on abandonment issues. Kate Middleton spends four hours doing her hair. A male TV actor comes out of the closet. Tuesday gossip stopped believin' years ago.
On today's episode of People We Envy, we feature Catherine Li: a 24-year-old woman who has spent the last seven months walking across America—across purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain—with nothing but a shopping cart full of necessities and her adventurous spirit. We totally support her endeavor.
Ryan Gosling has had "two of the greatest girlfriends of all time," and neither of them are you. Lindsay Lohan loses something (that isn't her mind, her youth or her talent). And Salahi drama continues. It's Sunday gossip!
Roundtrip tickets to Larnaca, Cyprus: $1,300. Lodging at your pal's dad's pad on the Mediterranean: Free. Getting your goofy video turned into a symbol of generational excess: Priceless. I'm starting to feel some sympathy for the Camp Cyprus 20, the crazy Internet kids who filmed themselves cavorting poolside at Wall Street big Bob Lessin's gleamingly white vacation home, to the tune of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." The charge: That they lacked self-awareness. Hence, for example, this remix of the video set to "Highway to Hell."Are you kidding? These guys had two hours a day of poststructuralist textually-agnostic confabulism theory before lunch in college. On the surface, "Don't Stop Believin'" sounds like an anthem of cluelessness, a party song to get your frat-rock dance on. Listen closely, though, and you'll see that it's actually a nihilistic, no-future tale sung by a senselessly addicted gambler. The schadenfreude crowd is bent on telling these happy-go-lucky Facebookers and Googlers and Blip.tvers and Drop.ioers how they're gonna sing the blues. Guess what, guys? These Cyprussians have figured out that some will win and some will lose. Here are the lyrics to the song, annotated to further your understanding of the video's wit; deconstructionist comments welcome, but only if you're showing your wasted liberal-arts education to best effect.
Google has asked San Francisco for permission to host a "picnic-style dinner" for 1,400 sales employees on June 11. What's really pathetic: Google wants its salespeople to boogie down after hours to the sounds of U2 and Journey. Not the actual U2 and Journey, mind you, but cover bands. Neighbors aren't charmed, and not just by having their backyards used at the set for lightly inebriated lip dubs of "Don't Stop Believing." But the people who bring in Google's billions should ask why, if Larry Page is such pals with Bono, he wasn't able to deliver the real thing for their park-wide party.
